Help & FAQ

How do I install inDepth Blue on my Garmin watch?

Plug the watch into your computer and run the desktop installer. It takes four steps:

1. Plug your Garmin into your computer with its regular charging cable.
2. On some watches, set USB mode to MTP (Settings → System → USB Mode) if the installer doesn’t detect it.
3. Download and run the desktop installer. It copies inDepth Blue to your watch automatically.
4. Unplug the watch and open inDepth Blue from the watch’s app / glance list.

Installed already? The user guides cover what to set before your first session and what every button does, for inDepth Blue, inDepth Pool and the phone app.

Which Garmin watches does inDepth support?

inDepth is two Connect IQ apps with different device support. The desktop installer and manual-sideload bundles ship the right file for your watch automatically. The lists below show what each app covers.

Which watches run inDepth Blue, and how deep do they read?

• Fēnix 5 / 5S / 5X and Fēnix 5 Plus / 5S Plus / 5X Plus: supported, and the depth reading is uncapped, verified in open water to 30 m. One gap: the Fēnix 5 and 5S don’t have spot marking (see the spot-marking section below). The 5X and the whole Fēnix 5 Plus family do.
• Fēnix 7 / 7S / 7X: supported, but depth only to ~3 m. Garmin firmware clamps the barometer reading Connect IQ can see to roughly 3 m, so on a dive the reading stops long before you reach the bottom. That ~3 m is inferred, not measured. It comes from Garmin's own and other divers' reports plus the hardware-measured Descent Mk3 below. No Fēnix 7 has been dive-tested for us. Because of it, inDepth Blue offers only the surface-rest models that work from dive time on these watches: 2× Dive Time, 3× Dive Time and Manual, with 2× the default. Adaptive (AIDA), Taravana and Molchanovs aren't listed. Fed a clamped ~3 m reading, all three already worked out to plain 2× anyway, so the mode name now matches the number and no rest gets shorter. If one of them is already stored in your settings it reads as 2×, and the setting itself is left alone. Restore it onto a watch that measures depth and your original choice comes back.
• Fēnix 8 / 8 Solar / 8 Pro (including tactix 8 and quatix 8): supported, depth to ~40 m, and not subject to the ~3 m Connect IQ clamp that limits the Fēnix 7. These watches ship as dive computers, with a dedicated depth sensor rated to 40 m.
• Descent Mk3 43mm and Descent Mk3i 51mm: supported, but depth only to ~3 m. This one is measured, not inferred: an instrumented pool dive found the Connect IQ reading hard-capped at ~3.3 m. The deep sensor belongs to the watch's native dive mode and isn't exposed to apps at all. Surface rest works exactly as on the Fēnix 7 above, 2× / 3× Dive Time and Manual only, default 2×, for the same reason.
• Descent Mk2 / Mk2i and Descent Mk2 S: supported, but depth only to ~3 m. This one is reported by a diver, not instrumented: a tester running inDepth Blue on a Mk2 found the reading stopping at about 3 m, the same place the Mk3 stops. That is a step below the Mk3's measurement above, since nobody has put a Mk2 on instruments and logged the raw pressure. It is still a positive report of a clamp, which is why we no longer call the Mk2's depth an open question. Surface rest works as on the Fēnix 7 and the Mk3: 2× / 3× Dive Time and Manual only, and the default is now 2× instead of Adaptive (AIDA). If you were already using Adaptive, Taravana or Molchanovs on a Mk2, your setting is not overwritten. It reads as 2×, and it comes back if you restore those settings onto a Fēnix 5 or Fēnix 8. Your rests don't get shorter either: fed a ~3 m reading those three modes were already coming out at plain 2×.
• Descent G2: supported, and its depth reading has never been checked. Not by us, not by a diver, not on instruments — there is no figure to give you. What we can say is that it's a Descent, and on every Descent we have seen, Garmin keeps the deep sensor for the watch's own dive mode and hands apps a reading that stops near 3 m. So the app assumes the G2 does the same: inferred from the family, no test of any kind, which is a weaker basis than the Mk2's diver report above. In practice that means the G2 behaves like a Mk2 here — 2× / 3× Dive Time and Manual only, default 2×, and a stored Adaptive, Taravana or Molchanovs is left alone and reads as 2×. If you dive a G2 with inDepth Blue, tell us what it reads and we'll publish it.

Which watches run inDepth Pool?

• Fēnix 5 Plus / 5S Plus / 5X Plus, Fēnix 7 / 7S / 7X, Fēnix 8 / 8 Solar / 8 Pro (including tactix 8 and quatix 8), and Descent Mk2 / Mk2i, Mk2 S, Mk3 43mm, Mk3i 51mm, Descent G2: all supported. Nothing about depth applies here, because inDepth Pool doesn’t read depth at all.
• The plain Fēnix 5 / 5S / 5X are not supported by inDepth Pool. Those watches don’t have enough memory for the pool app to launch. Use inDepth Blue on them, or pick a Fēnix 5 Plus / Fēnix 7 / Fēnix 8 / Descent watch for Pool.

How do I mark a dive spot on the watch?

Mark Spot saves your surface position in two places. One copy goes into inDepth Blue’s own dive log, which syncs to the phone app and draws on a satellite map. The other goes into the watch’s own saved locations, so Garmin’s Navigate app can steer you back with no phone involved at all. You surface next to a reef you want to find again, or drop the line over a wreck worth a trip back next season: that is what it is for.

How do I turn spot marking on?

Spot marking ships off. On the watch, go to Settings → GPS → Store Location and Mark Spots. That name is deliberately two things: it lets you mark spots on demand, and it records where you dived on its own, a position at the start of the session and one at the start of each dive. Those two positions are what put the session-start pin and the numbered dive pins on the phone’s map. Toggling it takes effect immediately, mid-session included.

How do I mark a spot during a session?

1. During a session, press START or BACK to open the end-session menu. Opening it doesn’t end anything.
2. Choose Mark Spot, the row just below Cancel. It only appears when the GPS setting is on, so it’s never a dead option.
3. Pick a label: Reef, Fish, Wreck, Entry, Boat or Hazard.
4. The watch confirms Spot saved and drops you straight back into the session.

Where do marked spots end up?

In two places: the phone app’s dive log and the watch’s own saved locations. The difference is worth knowing before you’re out on the water counting on one of them.

• In the phone app. This is the authoritative copy. The session’s detail screen grows a WHERE card: satellite imagery with the session start, a numbered pin per dive, and a labelled pin for every spot you marked. Below the map each spot gets its own row with its label, the time you marked it and its coordinates, plus a directions button that hands that one coordinate to your phone’s own maps app. That button is what you’ll steer a boat back with. The map icon in the Dives tab’s top bar opens Marked spots: every spot from every session on one map, which is the answer to “where was that reef?” months later.
• In the watch’s own saved locations. Named after the label and the time you marked it, e.g. Fish 12:47. That is what lets Navigate → Saved Locations guide you back, in Garmin’s own navigation screens, while you swim on the surface with the phone left on the boat. Verified on hardware (Descent Mk3i 51 mm and Fēnix 5 Plus).

What are the limits of spot marking?

• It runs GPS for the whole session. From the moment you start a session until you save or discard it, the receiver stays on, not only while you’re marking. On a long day on the water that costs battery, and it is the main reason the setting ships off. Nothing runs between sessions.
• GPS does not reach through water. Every position, the ones you mark and the ones the watch takes on its own, is taken at the surface. A dive’s pin is where you went down, not where you were at depth. Mark a spot floating on the surface above it, not on the way up.
• Thirty marks per session. The 31st is refused with 30 spots max rather than quietly pushing the first one out.
• No fix, no mark. With no usable position the watch says No GPS fix and saves nothing. Better no mark than a mark in the wrong place. Give it a clear view of the sky for a few seconds and try again.
• The Garmin saved location is best-effort. Garmin’s watches cap that list (Fēnix-class watches at around 100 saved locations), and when it is full the save fails silently. The watch reports nothing back, so inDepth Blue cannot detect it or warn you. You would see Spot saved and still find nothing in Navigate. inDepth Blue’s own copy is unaffected and still syncs to the phone, so the mark itself isn’t lost. If you rely on Navigate, prune your saved locations occasionally.
• Not available on Fēnix 5 / 5S. On those two watches there is no GPS row in Settings and no Mark Spot item in the end-session menu. Their compiled code shares one 131,072-byte budget with the app’s runtime memory, so the whole feature is left out of the build to leave room for the app to run. Every other supported watch has it, the Fēnix 5X included.

Troubleshooting

Why can’t the installer find my watch?

Usually the cable or the USB mode. Use a data-capable cable (the charging cable that came with the watch), make sure the watch is unlocked, set USB mode to MTP, and try a different USB port. Unplug and replug after changing the USB mode.

Where does the app appear after installing?

In the watch’s app list. inDepth Blue installs as a Connect IQ app: open it from there, or add it as an activity or glance in the watch’s menus.

What if automatic install didn’t work?

Copy the file over by hand. On some setups the installer falls back to saving the file so you can do exactly that. Follow the on-screen steps: save inDepth-blue.prg, then drag it into your watch’s GARMIN → Apps folder and eject.

Where do I get help with the phone app?

On the support page, which covers pairing, syncing, exports and backups. Or email support@in-depth.app.