As of version 5.0 of ConnectStats it is possible to download activities from a server maintained using the new Garmin Health API, instead of the traditional method that was downloading the activities from the Garmin Connect web site directly.
This should provide going forward more stability as this service is officially supported by Garmin.
Here are some instruction on how to setup
Table of Contents
Beta Testing
As of now, this is in beta testing or is available in the app only for testing. You can use Test Flight to download the beta version using this invitation link. If you download the application please read this article in full so you understand the choices. This is currently a service that is not extensively tested, which is why I need volunteer, but I recommend starting a new profile so your existing activity list continues to work.
Setting up the new service
You can use two approaches to use the new service for new activities or the full history.
If you have an existing profile where you had downloaded activities from Garmin with the current method, you can start using the new service, but turning off download from Garmin and enabling the new one. It should identify duplicates and the new activities will come via the new API.
You can start from an empty profile and download your history from the new service. Note that you can create a new profile and keep an existing profile to switch back and forth, this should work just fine.
Note on creating a new profile
You can create a new profile from the setting page
Setting up the new service
You can set up the new service from the Service configuration page. You’ll need to enable download activities and choose from which date to synchronise your account from. One current issue with the new service is that the initial synchronisation with Garmin is quite slow, because the process of receiving past activities is throttled at 90 days of past activities every few minutes. So one year of data takes about 8 minutes. It means for each year you want to synchronise you will have to wait about 8 minutes before you can use the service in the app, and for example 5 years would take about 40 minutes. The app issues a warning while the synchronisation is happening with the estimated time to completion.
Once the synchronisation is finish, after you refresh you will receive the activities from the new service.
I did quite a bit of improvement to the duplicate detection, and given the service communicates the identifier in Garmin connect, the app should work fine to use the new service only after downloading the history from the old service.
Specific area to test
I would like volunteer to test multi sport activities and swimming activities. I do not swim, so I haven’t had much opportunity to test this.