Photo Time: Put Your Own Photos on Your Garmin, With a Layout Per Photo
Photo Time is a Garmin watchface that turns your own photos into the background. Upload them on the website, place the time where it suits each photo, pick its colours, and it syncs to your watch.
Photo Time: your own photos as your Garmin watchface
Garmin's own Face It lets you put a photo on your watch, but the result rarely looks great: the time and stats are dropped on top without much thought for what's underneath. Photo Time is my watchface that does it differently. Every photo gets a layout and colours that actually fit it.
How it works
- Install Photo Time from the Connect IQ Store
- Get your link code. After installing, the watch shows a default photo with a short link code on it
- Enter the code on www.vaw.be/code and upload your first photo. It's resized to your watch's exact screen
- Style it. Right next to the cropper, choose where the time goes and pick the colours, with a live preview of your watchface over the photo
- Wait for the sync. Within about 5 minutes your photo arrives on the watch. A small loader at the top of the screen shows the progress, and when it completes, your photo is there
A layout and colours for every photo
This is the part that makes it look good. Every photo keeps its own style. A beach photo with a bright sky can have the time at the bottom in dark colours, and a forest photo the time on the right in white, and the watch switches to the right style every time the photo changes.
You can put the time on the right, on the left, at the top or at the bottom, and set seven colours separately: the time, the date, the minute ticks, the indicators, the goal gauge and both stats.
Adding more photos
Upload more photos on the same website. To get them on your watch straight away, long-press the photo (anywhere away from the time and the stats): that shows your next photo and starts a new sync. By default the photo also changes daily, or you can switch it every hour or every time you raise your wrist.
And everything else you'd expect
- Choose your fonts, add seconds and AM/PM, or switch to analog hands
- A goal gauge along the edge and stats along the bottom, from a long list of fields, on three pages you switch by long-pressing them
- Change the colours right on the watch too, or with Garmin's own watch face editor
- Always-on modes for AMOLED watches
Prefer a different photo watchface? Photo Pro is another one of mine.
Install Photo Time →What to read next
EXTRA5Garmin MARQ (Gen 3): A Big Upgrade Over the MARQ 2, but Basically a fēnix 9
Another week, another Garmin launch: six new MARQ watches from $2,500. A very welcome upgrade over the MARQ 2, but put it next to the fēnix 9 Pro and it's basically the same watch in a luxury case.
Day 15128Let Your Garmin Switch On Its Flashlight When It Gets Dark
Being visible matters when you run in the dark. Set the Flashlight Strobe in your Run activity to After Sunset once, and your watch starts flashing by itself as soon as it gets dark.
Popular reads
Watchfaces worth installing
Watchface
Cockpit
Everything you need to track your day on one clean, cleverly laid-out watchface, with colours you change right on the watch and a second time zone.
Watchface
Goals Pro
The most popular Garmin watchface, upgraded: the same goal rings with full control over colours, fonts, analog or digital time, and long-press shortcuts.
Watchface
Titan
A premium, data-dense watchface built for athletes who want maximum information at a glance.