Garmin lays groundwork for nutrition tracking with photo logging

Our teardown of Connect 5.20 reveals that Garmin is laying the foundation for native nutrition tracking. This includes new onboarding flows, premium feature logic, food-related camera strings and a direct image upload path that all point to upcoming functionality.

At the moment Garmin Connect does not offer native food tracking where you log meals inside the app itself like MyFitnessPal, Cronometer or Lose It. While the company lets you see calorie and nutrition information in Garmin Connect if you link a third‑party service, and you can view calories burned and consumed in a net balance view,

Camera strings and upload path point to food photo logging

The clearest sign of a new feature is the addition of a file path tied to nutrition/food/upload/image, along with updates to Garmin’s internal camera stack. These appear for the first time in 5.20 and are not present in the previous build.

The app now includes five new string keys that support a camera-based flow:

• lbl_camera_access_needed
• msg_camera_access_needed
• message_reached_maximum_photos
• message_reached_maximum_photos_plural
• photo_limit_value

These strings define camera permissions, dynamic image counters and upper limits on the number of photos. This is Garmin’s typical structure when introducing in-app image capture. There is no indication yet of optical character recognition or AI-based food analysis, but adding a camera stack is a clear first step.

Alongside these strings is a new image asset: img_nutrition_setup_genesis_placeholder.webp. This placeholder did not exist in 5.19.2 and matches the style of other first-run onboarding content. Its presence suggests that a guided setup screen is in active development.

Here are some actual images that appear in the back-end of Garmin Connect.

Dormant nutrition strings now wired into real flows

While many nutrition and hydration labels have been present in earlier versions, 5.20 starts to connect them to real UI logic. For example:

“Your device can track your calorie and fluid use during activity to help you evaluate and maximize your training performance.”

“Create a Power Guide strategy to receive nutrition and hydration recommendations.”

“Enter a ‘feels like’ temperature for this ride to help determine your nutrition and hydration guidance.”

Fueling feedback strings uncovered in the app suggest that Garmin is building contextual guidance that reacts to environmental factors. These include:

“Hot conditions can increase hydration needs, so stay on top of fluids and keep carbs steady.”

“You’ll need a lot of carbs for this ride, so practice your fueling strategy well before race day.”

“There are no specific fluid recommendations for this ride, but it’s a good idea to bring a bottle and drink as needed.”

The full set includes references to ride duration, weather and hydration targets. Combined with user profile data like sweat rate and acclimation, this points to personalised fueling suggestions rather than static intake goals.

Premium gating suggests a Connect+ link

Strings like hasNutritionPremiumFeature and showNutritionFeatureUpdate now appear in the logic as well. These are standard markers for Connect+ exclusives, suggesting Garmin may reserve some of the new nutrition tools for paid subscribers. That does not come as much of a surprise. It would match the recent handling of features like AI-generated summaries and advanced workout suggestions.

Garmin has not announced anything official on nutrition tracking yet. But this is the clearest signal so far that the feature is actively in development. It aligns with a growing push in the wearables space to go into more holistic health management. As part of this update, we also found backend support for a new health status summary feature.

The findings discussed in this article come from a teardown of Garmin Connect 5.20 conducted by Gadgets & Wearables.

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