Garmin Watches Are Catatonic Thanks to a ‘Blue Triangle of Death’

Garmin’s range of smartwatches seems to be on strike. Since yesterday, users worldwide are reporting that their Garmins are stuck in a boot loop, showing on their screens a deceptively harmless-looking blue triangle as they try in vain to boot over and over, locking their users out from using them.

They’re not “bricked,” as some outlets have reported. Bricked would mean the devices are permanently disabled, and there’s no reason to suspect that the affected Garmins won’t be fixed with an update. Until then, it’s a scramble for everyone from Garmin to forum-loads of Garmin smartwatch owners to figure it out so they can resume their fitness routines.

triangle of sadness

Affected watches, according to a variety of reports from users and publications, include many sub-models of the Forerunner, Venu, Fenix, Epix, Vivoactive, Lily, Instinct, and Marq model families. That’s most of Garmin’s smartwatch lineup.

The unifying factor seems to be that affected watches have built-in GPS capabilities, which allow for such things as tracking fitness routines and planning running routes. And there are an awful lot of pissed off Garmin owners angry at how missing a day or two of exercise tracking has thrown off their Garmin fitness profiles.

Garmin pinned the following message near the top of every page on its support center and framed the entire message in bright red so that nobody could possibly miss it. They must be as sick of answering the same panicked question as people are of asking it.

“We are aware of an issue causing some devices to be stuck on the startup screen or a blue triangle,” it reads. “To resolve this, press and hold the power button until the device turns off, then power it back on, and sync with the Garmin Connect app or Garmin Express. If this does not resolve your issue, Please click here for more information.“

Some users have reported that the fix worked, others reported that it worked temporarily and then reverted to the blue triangle of death, and still others reported that the fix just didn’t work for them.

Garmin has model-specific webpages offering instructions on how to fix the issue, such as this one for the fēnix 6. Find your watch model’s page, and then navigate to the entry that mentions “Stuck on Blue Triangle” for instructions specific to your model.

Folks have been trying their hands at identifying the issue for themselves, such as this Reddit thread in which they claim a malfunctioning file relating to GPS functions has caused the issue.

Whatever it is, I’ll bet affected owners will never look at a triangle the same way again. Breathe, and go for a run. Just avert your eyes if you happen to come across any yield signs.