Garmin Connect adds followers and new privacy controls

Garmin is changing how social connections work inside Connect. The Android app is now introducing a follower system, along with a fresh set of privacy controls that look much closer to a modern social platform than the old “connections” setup users have known for years. The rollout is happening through an onboarding flow

Garmin Connect starts borrowing from social media playbooks

Up to now, Garmin Connect mostly treated social interaction as a two-way relationship. You connected with someone and both sides gained access based on shared permissions. The new system changes that structure quite a bit.

Garmin now says existing “connections” are becoming followers. Users can follow people they want to engage with, while mutual follows become “friends” inside the app. It is a setup that feels immediately familiar if you have used Instagram, X or Strava.

The app repeatedly reassures users that “nothing will change” in how they interact with connections. But under the surface, this is an important shift because it separates following from friendship.

That opens the door to more public facing profiles and creator-style engagement. Someone could share workouts publicly, attract followers and interact with a broader audience without approving everyone as a full connection.

Privacy settings now sit at the centre of the experience

Garmin clearly knows social features can become sensitive very quickly in a fitness app. The onboarding process spends most of its time walking users through privacy settings.

Users can decide whether follower requests require approval or whether anyone can follow automatically. Separate controls exist for profile visibility, activity sharing, steps and badges.

Garmin also offers several visibility layers including “Only Me”, “My Followers”, “My Followers and Groups” and “Everyone”. Activity privacy even includes a custom setting for assigning different privacy levels to different activity types.

That is a noticeable expansion compared to Garmin’s older setup. The company seems to be trying to strike a balance between social discovery and tighter control over health and fitness data.

Some of the wording is also quite deliberate. Garmin specifically reminds users that shared activity data may include heart rate and activity location. That suggests the company wants to avoid confusion before people suddenly discover their morning runs are visible to a much wider audience.

This could change how Garmin communities work

Garmin has slowly been leaning harder into community features over the past couple of years. Challenges, group features, comments, reactions and event participation have all become more visible inside Connect.

A follower system fits perfectly into that direction. It also creates a structure that could support athlete pages, creator accounts, coaching communities or public training journals much more cleanly than the old mutual connection model.

Strava already built a huge part of its identity around this type of social graph. Garmin has traditionally focused more on training metrics and hardware. But the lines between fitness platform and social platform have been getting blurrier for a while.