Data fields
What is a Data Field?
Understand how a Data Field adds a live metric to an existing Garmin activity.
On this page
A Garmin Data Field is a live metric that runs inside an activity you start on your watch. It reads information from that activity, calculates or formats values, and displays the result in one of the activity's data-screen positions.
Garmin still owns activity recording, GPS, laps, and the surrounding screen. A Data Field does not replace the activity app, and it is different from both the watch's home-screen watch face and a full Connect IQ Watch App.
What you can create
DialStudio Data Fields can start simple or become custom activity dashboards:
- Native/simple fields show one Garmin-managed value with a label, unit, and missing-data fallback.
- Custom visual fields draw text, shapes, images, gauges, and zone treatments inside adaptive activity-screen layouts.
- Formulas combine activity values, conversions, conditionals, null handling, and session or lap state.
- Zones and alerts track ranges and deliver visual, tone, or vibration feedback without relying on color alone. Repeating alerts can use a cooldown so steady conditions do not become noisy.
- Custom FIT fields can save selected record, lap, and session values into the activity file.
Use simple mode when you want Garmin to handle final typography and placement. Use custom visual mode when the layout itself matters.
How activity data behaves
Activity values can be temporarily unavailable before GPS settles, while the timer is paused, during a lap transition, or when a sensor disconnects. Design the missing-data state as part of the field instead of treating it as a build error.
DialStudio's preview uses deterministic playback scenarios for running, cycling, swimming, paused, missing-data, lap transition, reset, workout-target, sensor-searching, stale-sensor, and disconnected-sensor states. Active scenarios coordinate realistic changes across applicable metrics, with Easy, Steady, and Tempo effort levels. The same scenario and elapsed playback time always produce the same frame, and Preview does not use your health, location, or activity history. Always verify the final field on the target watch before relying on it during an activity.
The source catalog includes live and average speed, heart rate and power, cadence, distance, timer values, ascent and descent, altitude, oxygen saturation, calories, and active-navigation distances. Source availability remains watch- and activity-dependent.
Compatibility
Every Data Field project is checked against the selected watch. Compatibility includes Connect IQ API level, available Activity.Info values, source permissions, presentation mode, custom FIT support, feedback capabilities, and resource limits.
If a watch cannot provide a source, the generated field uses your configured missing-data fallback. If a chosen feature is unsupported, Studio blocks the build and points to the affected source, visual element, alert, or FIT field.
What the build contains
A Data Field project stores the selected sources, formulas, display mode, units, fallback behavior, simulation assumptions, optional FIT fields, and target device. A desktop build turns that project into a signed Garmin .prg file for one watch model.
After installing it, add the field to a supported activity's data screen. Continue with Create your first Data Field.