Garmin's New Beta Platform Explained & How-To Sign-Up

Garmin's just started rolling out a new beta program, here's how it works, how to sign-up, which devices, and what Garmin is trying to do.

Over the last few weeks Garmin has been rolling out a new beta program, which aims to streamline the process of trying out beta features, while also making it easier to file bug reports for issues that you find. Public beta programs at Garmin are nothing new, they’ve been in place for years, and since their introduction they’ve dramatically improved the software quality level of the final production software. As their watches continue to get more and more complex, the ability for Garmin to test every combination of every feature in every scenario or edge case is simply impossible, even with test case automation.

But the goal of a beta program serves two purposes. First, is for the product maker to catch bugs in pre-release software. But second, is to shape the product based on feedback. And we’ve seen countless instances of Garmin changing features based on that product feedback. Garmin’s Fenix division was among the first to do public beta downloads many years ago, but these days most Garmin sports-related groups have public beta programs to varying degrees. We tend to see Garmin’s Fenix & Edge programs have a longer beta cycle than other groups, but ultimately, most divisions have some beta program.

With the new changes, you can now enroll your device for continued beta software updates, which it’ll receive automatically via WiFi/Bluetooth/USB. Previously you had to manually download each beta update. Further, Garmin has split it’s beta program into what are effectively two chunks. First is what they call ‘Alpha’ releases, which are effectively what the old beta program was (and still requires manual download). While the new ‘Beta’ program is using Release Candidate builds, which means they’re almost ready to be released as product builds.

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