How to use the inDepth phone app

Setting up

1. Pair your watch in Garmin Connect first. inDepth has no pairing wizard of its own. It only lists the watches Garmin Connect already knows about.
2. Open inDepth and tap ＋ Add a watch in the top bar (or Me → Add a watch). That lands you on Your gear, which leads with Connect your watch: tap Pair in Garmin Connect (iPhone: it bounces you back to Garmin Connect once so iOS can hand over the list it already has) or Refresh (Android), then pick the watch to sync from. With a single paired watch it's chosen for you.
3. Open inDepth Blue (or inDepth Pool) on the watch, then tap Sync from watch.

Once you've synced, the chip settles into a plain sync icon and opens that same card as a sheet from any tab, so later syncs never need the Settings trip.

Keep the watch app and the phone app on matching versions. The sync protocol is a clean break across releases. For inDepth Blue and inDepth Pool, only one direction stops a sync: if the watch app is newer than the phone app, the card says "Update inDepth on your phone" and refuses the round rather than filing data it could misread. Your sessions stay on the watch and come across once the phone app is updated. An older watch app still syncs normally. inDepth Dry is stricter: either side being ahead stops it. Update the phone without updating the dry app on your watch to match, and dry sync just stops until you do; the card names whichever side needs the update.

The four tabs

Four tabs across the bottom: Coach, Log, Trends and Me. The app is light-themed only. Settings live on Me (your profile, your watch apps, then Settings), so wherever you are, they are one tap away.

• Coach: dry training and pool workouts, switched with a Dry / Pool switch at the top, plus short coach messages when the app has something to say about your numbers. Self-guided dry training needs no watch at all. Its CO2/O2 tables, static holds and apnea walks run right here on the phone and are open to everyone, with a coached weekly plan if you want one. See the training guide for coaching, training phases and the full exercise library. The Pool side builds pool workouts and pushes them to the watch: set the discipline, pool length and an ordered list of sets, with +/−steppers for distance and rest, so there are no numbers to type. Two starter workouts are there on first launch. A small How it works link with the switch opens a quick note that the app works on its own and gets much better with a compatible Garmin watch. On compact screens it is labeled Info. Me → Settings → How inDepth works opens the same note.
• Log: one newest-first list of everything you've recorded, as cards grouped by This week, Last week and then month, each with a small DRY, DEPTH or POOL tag. Each card shows one number and one line, plus a mark: hanging strokes for a depth session's dives, horizontal bars for a pool session's reps, and a phase ribbon for a dry session's holds. Every depth card is drawn to the same scale, your deepest dive ever, which fills the card top to bottom, so a shallow session looks shallow. On a depth card the strokes run left to right in the order you dived them, evenly spaced, so how long the mark is tells you how many dives the session held. The same session looks the same on your phone and in a browser. A dry session can be renamed, tagged and given a note right from the list too, same as a depth or pool one, and all of it syncs to your other devices. Tap the magnifier in the app bar to search by name or tag, and filter with the chips (All / Depth / Pool / Dry, your own tags, the pool disciplines you've swum). Tap a session for its detail; tap a dive or a rep for its own page.
• Trends: a shelf of personal bests, one per discipline (CWT, FIM, DYN, DNF, STA, and dry static, each measured by its own record: a depth, a distance, or a hold time), then a grid of equal-sized trend cards for deepest dive, bottom time, dives per session, water temp, pool distance and dry static holds. Depth records follow the discipline you tag a dive with; until you tag any, the shelf shows your whole-logbook deepest, longest and most dives instead. Each trend card needs two sessions to compare.

Pool on Coach and POOL trends show up when you have pool sessions or have Pool enabled in Me → Your gear. BLUE trends follow the same rule for depth sessions and Blue. Turning a switch off keeps your existing sessions visible. You can always import Garmin FIT files; importing a matching session brings these elements back automatically.

Dry on Coach is the exercise library and your dry training plan. It opens on your personal best (run a Max Static, on the phone or the watch, to set one) and every exercise scales from it. For coaching, training phases, running a session and what happens if you report a warning sign, see the training guide: it covers dry training in full, including the version that runs at app.in-depth.app in your browser. Everything else (Coach's Pool side, Log, Trends, Me) works the same in the browser as it does on the phone.

Syncing

Tap the watch status chip to open the connection sheet, then tap Sync from watch. The same card, with the same button, also sits at the top of Me → Your gear, which is where the chip takes you before you've told it you own anything. The phone asks the watch what is new and pulls it in small batches, re-requesting anything Bluetooth drops, so a large backlog gets through even on a busy link. You will see a real percentage and what it's doing ("Collecting pool sessions…", "Streaming dive profiles…", "Pulling heart-rate traces…"), then a result.

Every result names the watch app that answered. A watch runs one Connect IQ app at a time, so a result is only ever true of that app, never of the whole watch.

A result can carry one short note under it: that some heart-rate traces or some watch-side workout edits didn't arrive (both fetched again by the next sync, with nothing for you to do; a workout you deleted on the phone isn't held up by this either; that still makes its own way to the watch), or that something isn't reaching your cloud backup. And while the other watch app is still being tried, the result names it ("Still checking inDepth Pool…") instead of pretending the round is over.

Three things worth knowing:

• A Garmin watch runs one Connect IQ app at a time. One tap reaches whichever app is open: open inDepth Blue to pull dives, inDepth Pool to pull pool sessions and to receive workouts. One tap never gets both.
• You can stop a running sync at any time. Nothing partly transferred is saved, so nothing is lost. It's simply re-sent next time. A sync is never cut short for being slow, so if the link dies the card tells you rather than guessing: "The link has gone quiet — still waiting." That's your cue that stopping might be the right move.
• Sync before the watch runs out of room. Each watch app holds the last 10 sessions (5, and about 25 dives, on a Fenix 5 or 5S) and overwrites the oldest whether or not it has synced.

What you get on the phone

• Session detail: three numbers (deepest, dives, bottom time), then the session itself: a tape with every dive hanging below a 0 m waterline at the time it happened, so the gap between two dives is the surface interval, drawn to scale. A gap where you went back down short of the guideline the watch used is tinted red, in place. Above it, when the numbers support one, a single sentence of reading: an observation, never advice, and nothing at all when they don't. Below it, every dive as a thumbnail of its own profile, four across on one shared depth scale: tap to open a dive, press and hold for its flags, note and delete. Everything else the session recorded is one tap away under Conditions: start and end times, length, longest dive, surface interval, water temperature, watch, and the Surface rest tile naming the guideline (the same feature as the watch's Surface Rest Alerts).
• Dive detail: the discipline and flags you tagged the dive with sit under the title, then the dive as three thin lanes on one time axis: depth, heart rate and velocity, stacked and aligned. Drag across them and one line moves with your finger while the row above reads out the elapsed time, depth, bpm and velocity at that instant. The velocity lane is signed around a center rule, so the turn is where the line crosses. You edit the dive's discipline, flags and note in place, right under the title (tap the edit icon or the annotation; changes save as you go). Previous and Next buttons along the bottom step through the session's dives. Below the lanes, max depth, duration, hang time, descent/ascent rates, average depth and a full heart-rate group: surface HR, bottom HR, the HR drop at depth (the dive reflex) and recovery. Every derived metric carries a small ⓘ with a plain-language definition.
• Pool session detail: one bar per rep with its distance, swim time, rest and heart-rate sparkline; each rep gets its own page built around its heart-rate trace. A session swum from a workout also shows a target tick and a Met / Under verdict per rep.
• Maps: sessions recorded with GPS on grow a Where card with satellite imagery, pins and a directions button that hands a spot to your phone's own maps app. The map icon on the Log lane opens Marked spots: every spot from every session you've synced, on one map. (One gap: a session where you marked a spot but never dived stays on the watch and isn't synced, so its marks are not here. Your watch's own saved location for it still is.) The app never asks for your phone's location: every coordinate came from the watch.
• Rename, tag and annotate anything: sessions, individual dives, individual reps. It's all kept on the phone, and a re-sync never overwrites it.

Settings worth knowing

Tap Me in the bottom bar. Under your profile and watch apps, Settings open onto a handful of categories (Account, Training, Display, Your data, Help & troubleshooting) instead of one long list. Everything below lives in one of them. One row sits outside them all, near the top: How inDepth works, which pops up a short note on what the app does and where the watch fits in.

• Account: sign in with Google (both platforms) or Apple (iOS) to turn on cloud backup for dives, pool sessions, workouts, dry sessions (including your ladder progress and heart-rate traces), positions and marked spots, and to merge in anything already on the account from another phone. Two phones left open converge within a couple of seconds. Your dry training settings (which exercises you've unlocked and a hand-typed PB) travel with the account too, so a new phone picks up where the old one left off. Voice and haptic cues stay on the device. Sign out and the traveling settings on that phone revert to defaults; sign back in and they fill in again. Signing in is entirely optional: signed out, cloud backup stays off. Signed in or not, the iOS and Android app sends usage stats and crash reports to Google Firebase, tied to a random install ID and never to your name, email or account; there is no switch to turn it off. Feedback is sent only when you choose to. See the privacy policy.
• Signing out: Me → Settings → Account → Sign out keeps your data on this phone by default, so your logbook stays accessible while signed out. Check Also delete data from this phone to delete it instead; that asks you to confirm, then signs you out before clearing your logbook, workouts, training history and progress, settings, saved watch connections, and diagnostic logs. The app restarts with a fresh setup. Anything that hasn't been backed up will be lost. Your account and data already saved to the cloud stay, as does data on your watch and other phones. Signing in or syncing your watch can bring that data back.
• Your gear (open it from Add a watch in Me): where you connect a watch, and where all three watch apps are described. It leads with Connect your watch, the same connection card the status chip opens as a sheet, so pairing and your first sync happen right here. That's where ＋ Add a watch sends you. Below it are inDepth Blue, inDepth Pool and inDepth Dry, listed whether you own them or not, with what each one adds. All three I have this switches start off, and syncing an app flips its switch on for you. You can turn one back off, but it will not survive your next sync of that same app. Nothing can detect Dry until you sync it, so that one is worth flipping by hand: turn it on and the card stops showing you where to get the app. No compatible watch? Flip I don't have a compatible watch at the top: the connect section goes away entirely, the three cards gray out, and the ＋ Add a watch chip disappears from Coach, Log and Trends. Come back to Me → Your gear to switch it off again.
• Your logbook in a browser: open app.in-depth.app with the same account, no separate sign-up. You can read and edit there too. It shows only what has already reached the cloud, and it doesn't refresh itself. Reload the page to pick up changes.
• Units: depth, temperature and time each default to Follow watch, or override them on the phone.
• Pool defaults: the pool length and rest time that pre-fill new sessions and workouts, kept in sync with the watch (the most recent change wins).
• Session Notes: a short note (200 characters) for the watch to show during a session, synced to the cloud like a workout. Not sent to a Fenix 5 / 5S: they can't display one.
• Import Garmin FIT: in Me → Settings → Your data, import supported .fit files from Garmin Connect, Garmin's Pool Apnea activity, or Apnea CWT. Matching session data is skipped, not overwritten. On iPhone, you can also share the file from Files to inDepth Apnea Sync. On Android, use Open with or the in-app picker. Follow the phone import steps.
• Bring your dive history: the card in Me → Add a watch → Your gear opens the import guide with See import steps. Got it dismisses the card on this installation. Review it anytime from Me → Settings → Help & troubleshooting → Import existing dive logs.
• Export all dives (CSV): a spreadsheet-friendly, one-way export. It deliberately leaves coordinates out, because CSVs get forwarded.
• Back up all data / Restore from backup: a single lossless .json file covering everything, positions and marked spots included. Treat it as private for exactly that reason.
• Pull diagnostics from watch: bundles phone and watch logs into a .zip to attach when you report a problem.
• Send feedback: in the mobile app, open Me → Settings → Help & troubleshooting → Send feedback. In a signed-out browser, choose Send feedback from the sign-in screen instead. Choose a category, write your message, and add a reply email only if you want an answer. Basic app and device details are always included. Include diagnostics is off by default and sends the tail of the phone's technical log only when you turn it on. A confirmation means Resend accepted the message for delivery, not that final delivery is guaranteed. A failed message stays in the open form for you to retry or discard. The app doesn't save or retry it in the background.

If something looks wrong

"Couldn't reach the watch"

The watch app has to be open on the watch.

"Update inDepth on your phone"

The watch app is newer than the phone app, so the sync was refused rather than risk filing data the phone could misread. Updating the phone app is what fixes it. Then tap Check again on that card, which re-tests whether the refusal still applies. Nothing was lost: every session is still on the watch and comes across once you're up to date.

"Update inDepth on your watch"

inDepth Dry only. Your phone app is newer than the dry app on your watch. Dry checks for an exact protocol match rather than only refusing a newer watch, so updating the phone without the watch is enough on its own to stop dry sync. Update inDepth Dry through the installer, then tap Check again.

My pool sessions didn't come across, but my dives did

Only one Connect IQ app can be open at a time. Open the other one on the watch and sync again.

"N sessions aren't backed up — sign in to upload them."

These were recorded while you were signed out, so they were never queued for the cloud and no amount of waiting fixes it. Sign in: that pushes every session on this phone to your account. (The one exception is after you delete an account and keep your local data. See the account-deletion item below.)

"Couldn't back up since <date>."

Uploads have been failing for over a day. Check your connection, then tap Back up now in Me → Settings → Account, which retries immediately. Nothing is ever thrown away for failing. It keeps trying on its own, just more slowly the longer it fails.

My phone-built workout isn't in the browser

Phone-built workouts reach the cloud when you sign in or tap Back up now, not the moment you save them. A workout built in the browser uploads immediately.

Nothing new shows in the browser

The browser doesn't update by itself. Reload the page.

A deleted session came back, or won't come back

The watch never re-sends a session it has already had acknowledged, so a delete after syncing sticks. A message at the bottom offers Undo for a few seconds; after that there's no undo outside restoring a backup. A delete before the watch's acknowledgment reappears on the next sync.

I deleted my account, kept my dives on the phone, and now nothing backs up

That's deliberate. Deleting the account erases the cloud copy; if you left "Also erase everything on this phone" unchecked, your local logbook stays, and it's not re-uploaded on a later sign-in, to any account, because that would put back exactly what you asked to have erased. Tap Back up now to publish it on purpose; ordinary syncing resumes after that.

A "watch app update available" banner

Your watch is running an older build; update it with the inDepth installer (install help). No banner doesn't prove you're up to date. It means the app has nothing certain to say.

The sync went quiet when I switched apps

On iOS it keeps running in the background, though it's not guaranteed to finish; on Android it may pause. Either way, coming back to inDepth continues that same sync where it left off.