Garmin Gear Tracking: The Complete Guide to Tracking Shoes, Bikes and More

Garmin gear tracking: the complete guide

Running shoe foam breaks down gradually, somewhere around 500 to 800 km (300 to 500 miles) depending on the shoe, your weight and your stride. You can't feel it happening. The cushioning loses its rebound slowly enough that your body adapts without noticing, until the extra impact catches up with your knees, shins or hips.

Your Garmin can count those kilometres for you, and warn you before a pair is done. And since the 2026 update, gear tracking isn't just for shoes anymore: bikes, bike components, skis, boards and more all get their own counter, and on newer watches you can pick your gear right on your wrist.

What gear tracking actually does

Every activity you link to a piece of gear adds to its totals. Garmin keeps four numbers for each item:

• Distance: the one that matters most for shoes and bikes
• Activities: how many sessions it's been used for
• Hours: total time in use, useful for gear where distance means little
• Days of use: how many separate days it's been out

Set a maximum distance and Garmin Connect notifies you when the item reaches it. Gear tracking is part of Garmin Connect for everyone. You don't need a Connect+ subscription.

What you can track

• Running shoes and boots
• Bikes and bike components
• Skis and snowboards
• Rackets and skates
• Paddleboards, surfboards and wakeboards
• Boats and wheelchairs
• Anything else, under Other

What changed in 2026

Garmin's Q1 2026 software update, released on 24 February 2026, turned gear tracking from a feature you had to remember into something that mostly runs in the background:

• A gear database with running shoe brands and bike models, so you search for your shoe instead of typing it in
• Gear collections, to group several items and assign them to an activity together
• More gear types, including bike components, skis and snowboards
• An on-watch experience on compatible watches, where you choose your gear on the watch and can see how much life a pair has left

The app side is available to all Garmin Connect users, whatever watch you have.

Step 1: add your gear in Garmin Connect

1. Open the Garmin Connect app, tap More, then Gear
2. Add a new item and choose its type, for example shoes
3. Search the gear database for the brand and model. If it isn't listed, enter it by hand
4. Give it a name you'll recognise on a small screen, like Daily trainer or Race shoes. That helps a lot once you have two pairs of the same model
5. Set a maximum distance
6. Choose the activity types it should be added to automatically, such as Run or Treadmill

The exact labels shift a little between app versions, but those are the fields you'll fill in. Anything you create here syncs to your watch, so the app is always where gear starts.

How much distance to set

• Everyday running shoes: 500 to 800 km is the usual range. Heavier runners, or anyone doing most of their running on hard roads, should start at the low end
• Carbon-plated race shoes: their light foam wears faster, so give them a lower limit than your trainers and keep them for races and key sessions
• Trail shoes: similar distances, but the lugs on the outsole often wear out before the foam does, so check them too
• Bikes: a limit on the frame means little. Put it on components that wear, like a chain, and treat the alert as a reminder to check or service them

Whatever you set, the limit is a reminder, not a verdict. Deep creases in the midsole, uneven wear or new aches that show up on runs are all reasons to retire a pair early.

Step 2: set defaults, and rotate more than one pair

Defaults are what make gear tracking automatic: every activity of that type is linked to the item without you doing anything. There's one catch: each activity type can only have one default pair of shoes. You can't make two pairs the default for Run at the same time.

If you rotate shoes, use the activity types themselves to split them:

• Your daily trainer as the default for Run
• Your trail shoes as the default for Trail Run
• An older pair as the default for Treadmill, where the softer surface asks less of the foam
• Race shoes with no default at all, picked by hand when you actually wear them

Step 3: choose your gear on the watch

With the 2026 update, these watches get gear tracking on the watch itself:

• Venu X1 and Venu 4
• vívoactive 6
• Forerunner 570 and 970
• fēnix 8, fēnix 8 Pro and fēnix E
• Enduro 3, tactix 8, quatix 8, quatix 8 Pro and D2 Mach 2
• Instinct 3, Instinct Crossover AMOLED and Instinct E

Watches launched since then, like the fēnix 9 and Forerunner 170, have it out of the box. Edge bike computers get the new gear tracking in the Garmin Connect app only.

To use it, open your activity list, pick the activity, go into its settings and turn on Gear. From then on, when you finish that activity, the watch asks which gear you used. Your list comes from Garmin Connect, so add the item in the app first. On supported watches you'll also see a progress bar showing how close a pair is to its maximum distance, which is a much better reminder than a notification you swipe away.

There's no separate gear widget or menu on the watch. Gear only shows up inside activity settings and at the end of an activity.

No compatible watch? Fix gear in the app

On any other watch, defaults still do the work automatically. When an activity ends up with the wrong gear, or none, open it in Garmin Connect, tap the three dots in the top-right corner and choose Add/Remove Gear. That's also how you fix the odd run in your race shoes that got logged on your daily trainer.

Gear collections

A collection groups several items so they're all assigned to an activity together, and all get the same usage added at once. That's useful whenever your kit comes as a combination:

• A road bike with its training wheels, and the same bike with its race wheels, as two collections, so each set of wheels gets only the kilometres it actually rode
• Triathletes keeping discipline-specific kit together, so one activity updates everything you used for it

When the alert fires

When an item hits its maximum distance, Garmin Connect sends you a notification. You don't have to bin the shoes that day, but stop relying on them for long runs and hard sessions, where the extra impact matters most.

A few habits that make this easier:

• Buy the next pair early. Start mixing in new shoes about 100 km before the old ones hit their limit, so the switch isn't sudden
• Retire gear instead of deleting it. Retired gear drops out of your selection lists but keeps its history, so you can look back at how far your previous pairs went
• Demote old shoes. A retired running shoe can still be fine for walking or the gym. Just stop linking it to runs

Tips that keep the numbers accurate

• Shoes you already own start at zero. Runs you did before adding a pair aren't counted automatically. Either link your past runs to it from each activity, or lower its maximum distance by roughly what's already on them
• Treadmill runs wear shoes too. Make sure Treadmill has a default, or those kilometres disappear from the count
• Strava keeps its own gear list. Gear you assign in Garmin Connect stays in Garmin Connect, so if you track shoes on Strava, set its defaults up separately
• Not just for running. If you set up a homemade Surf activity, give your board its own gear entry too

Replacing shoes based on the distance you actually ran, instead of "they still look fine", is one of the simplest injury-prevention habits there is. Garmin already counts the number that matters. You only have to set it up once.