The Free Tides App I Built for Garmin

Tides on your wrist, offline and free

If you spend time near the sea, the tide decides a lot of your day: whether the break works, whether the sandbank is walkable, whether your boat gets out of the harbour. Checking that usually means pulling out your phone, and phones and salt water are a bad pair.

So I built Tides for Garmin. It's free, and it puts the tide on your wrist.

What it shows

• The next high and low tides, with times and heights, for the hours ahead
• Tide extremes for the next 7 days, so you can plan the weekend, not just this afternoon
• A glance view on watches that support it, so a quick scroll from the watch face is enough for a check
• More than 200 stations worldwide, with optional manual station selection if the nearest one isn't the one you want
• Your choice of height reference: MSL, LAT or MLLW, plus optional tide coefficients

It works offline, on most watches

This is the part that matters on the coast. On current watches the tide predictions are calculated on the watch itself, from harmonic constants stored in the app. No phone, no signal, no data connection. Raise your wrist on the beach and the numbers are there.

Older watches don't have the memory to hold that engine and the station data at the same time, so on those the app asks my server for the tides instead. It still works, but your phone needs a connection when the data refreshes, and there are fewer screens.

Watches that need a connection

These are the models that fetch their tide data instead of calculating it:

• fēnix 5, 5S, 5X and the 5 Plus, 5S Plus and 5X Plus
• fēnix 6, 6S, 6 Pro, 6S Pro and 6X Pro
• Enduro (the first generation)
• Forerunner 55, 245, 245 Music, 645, 645 Music, 745, 935, 945 and 945 LTE
• vívoactive 3, 3 Music, 4 and 4S
• Venu, Venu Sq and Venu Sq Music, the first generation only: the Venu 2, 3, 4, X1 and Venu Sq 2 all calculate on the watch
• MARQ (Gen 1): Adventurer, Athlete, Aviator, Captain, Commander, Driver, Expedition and Golfer
• Descent Mk2S, D2 Air and D2 Mach 2 Pro
• The Legacy Hero and Legacy Saga watches: Captain Marvel, First Avenger, Darth Vader and Rey

Everything newer than that list, from the fēnix 7 and Forerunner 165 onwards, runs the calculation on the watch and works with your phone left at home.

It talks to your watch face

Tides shares its data with several watch faces, including Face It, Core, Goals, Goals 9, Titan and The Laziest Watchface Ever Created. If you use one of those, the next tide can sit on your watch face permanently, without opening anything.

Missing a location?

The station list keeps growing. If the coast you care about isn't covered yet, send me the location through the Contact Developer form on the store page and I'll look at adding it in the next update.

One safety note

Tides is for information, not for safety-critical decisions. Tide data can be inaccurate or out of date, so don't let an app on your wrist be the only thing standing between you and a rising tide. Check local sources for anything that actually matters.

Heading out on a board? Here's how to make a Surf activity on a Garmin that doesn't have one.

Get the free Tides app →