How to use inDepth Pool

Before your first session

1. Install it. Use the inDepth desktop installer over USB — install help and troubleshooting. 15 Garmin models are supported: the Fenix 5 Plus, Fenix 7 and Fenix 8 families, Descent Mk2 / Mk2S and Descent Mk3i. The plain Fenix 5, 5S and 5X are not supported — inDepth Blue still runs on them, inDepth Pool does not fit in their memory.
2. Hold MENU → Settings and set:
   • Discipline — DYN (with fins), DYNB (bi-fins) or DNF (no fins). Default DYNB.
   • Pool length — 25 m, 25 yd, 50 m, 50 yd or Custom. Default 25 yd. Distance is tracked in your pool's own unit, with no lossy conversion.
   • Rest time — the default rest countdown between reps. Default 2:00.
   • Breathe-up — the countdown before your first rep. Default 2:00; set it to 0 to skip that screen.
3. Be at the surface when you press START. The watch takes its surface-pressure reference then, and that reference is what automatic rep start and end depend on.

A session, start to finish

1. START on Home opens the picker: Free, each workout your phone has synced over, plus Create & sync workouts and Settings.
2. START on your choice lands on its pre-start card — a preview of what you are about to swim. START there opens a small menu: Start, and (on Free) Length, Rest and Discipline — each a one-off for the session you are about to start, which never changes your saved default and is discarded if you press BACK — or (on a workout) Edit to change its sets on the watch.
3. Breathe-up. The countdown before your first rep. Push off early and the rep simply starts.
4. Ready → swim. The rep begins automatically the moment you submerge past the Auto Start depth (0.5 m), and ends automatically when you surface past the Auto End depth (0.2 m).
5. Adjust the distance. The rep pre-fills with the target — or, in Free, with whatever you confirmed last rep. Nudge it with UP/DOWN in 1-unit steps, then BACK to confirm. Your rest is already counting — and your rest alerts fire on this screen too, which matters because it draws no clock — so take your time; and if you just push off and swim again, the rep is saved at the number on screen rather than lost.
6. Rest. The countdown runs to zero and then keeps counting up, so you can always see how long you have actually rested. The next rep starts when you dive or press BACK — never on its own.
7. Finish. Open the Session menu and choose Stop & Save. Finishing a workout's last rep prompts you instead: Add workout, Stop & Save or Discard. Discard asks first — “Discard session?” → Yes, discard / Cancel — whenever the session holds a saved rep, so one mis-press cannot lose your swim. Cancel keeps everything. A session with nothing in it is discarded on a single press, and Stop & Save is never confirmed. If you have written a session note on your phone or in the browser (Settings → Session Notes) for today’s swim, the Session menu carries one extra row, Session Note, showing what you wrote.

The buttons — the one thing to remember

During a session, BACK does the thing and START opens the menu. This is the same arrangement Garmin uses in its own strength workouts. An arrow on screen always points at BACK and names what it will do right now.

On Home, START still starts. A short curved line beside the START button tells you which mode you are in: green — on the pre-start card — means START opens a menu; white, once a session is running, means START opens the Session menu.

Settings worth knowing

• Auto Start / End — the submerge and surface depth thresholds (0.5 m and 0.2 m). Rep start is always automatic. Auto End can be switched off if your stroke keeps you shallow enough to trip it mid-length; BACK then ends every rep.
• Heart Rate — On, Record only or Off, with recovery Zones on every supported watch. Live bpm shows on the breathe-up and rest screens.
• Store Detailed Stats — on by default. Keeps a per-second heart-rate trace for each rep (the rest before it, then the swim), which is what draws the HR graph on the watch and on the phone.
• Turn Detection — off by default. Turn it on and the watch works out your per-length split times from the compass, adding a Turns page to each rep it can read confidently. It costs battery while you swim, and a rep it cannot read cleanly gets no splits rather than invented ones.
• Alerts — audio and vibration cues for the breathe-up and rest countdowns, set independently per phase: marks at 0:30 / 0:20 / 0:10, and a Countdown 0:05 that pulses each of the last five seconds and gives a strong "go" buzz at zero. Out of the box only the Countdown 0:05 vibration is on.
• Pause (Session menu) freezes the countdown and the session clock while you step away; the paused time never lands in the saved session.
• Reset to Factory Settings — erases every inDepth Pool session and setting.

Changing Heart Rate, Store Detailed Stats or Turn Detection mid-session takes effect on your next session. The watch reads all three once, when a session starts, so a session can never end up half-measured.

Reviewing what you swam

• UP during a session shows the running Summary: total distance, reps, duration, best rep and swim heart rate.
• DOWN shows the Progress list — every rep, with what you have already swum in green and what is ahead in grey. START on a finished rep opens its detail and heart-rate trace without ending the session.
• DOWN on Home opens your pool history: the sessions saved on the watch, newest first. Open one for its summary and every rep's stats, HR graph and — if Turn Detection was on — split times.

If something looks wrong

Reps do not start or end by themselves

The watch needs a usable pressure reading. Be at the surface when you press START, and check Auto End is on. If the sensor never reports, BACK starts and ends every rep instead — the session still records normally.

A rep has no Turns page

Turn Detection was off, or the compass could not cleanly count the lengths your saved distance implies. DNF and very short lengths are the hardest cases. The watch withholds splits rather than guessing — an occasional rep without them is normal.

My phone will not pull the session

A Garmin watch runs one Connect IQ app at a time. inDepth Pool has to be the app open on the watch when you sync — and the same goes for pushing workouts to it. See the phone app guide.

A workout I deleted on the watch came back

The phone re-sends your whole library on every sync. Delete it in the phone app to be rid of it for good.

Older sessions have disappeared

The watch keeps the 10 most recent and drops the oldest as new ones are saved. Everything that has synced to the phone is kept there permanently.

"This build has expired"

Sideloaded Connect IQ apps expire 180 days after the build date. Install a newer build from /install before then.