Mirror turn-by-turn navigation arrows on smartwatch

General talk
1

Sorry if this has already been answered, but I couldn’t find a solution so far.

I’m a huge fan of OSM’s turn-by-turn navigation on my phone, but I’d like to hike/bike with my phone running in my pocket and a watch showing me just the left/right arrows.
Is there a way to mirror just the arrows on a smartwatch, preferably an affordable one, not an Apple Watch?

Thanks

2

If it’s an Android phone in your pocket, the cheapest and cheerfullest option is probably something like:

  • Install any Android navigation app that can generate notifications
  • Install Gadgetbridge
  • Find a cheap fitness tracker that Gadgetbridge supports with notifications such as this one (used to be around £24.99 from Argos in the UK, now available from elsewhere). Others available, but check Gadgetbridge compatibility.
  • Configure the notifications you want to see to just the navigation ones

The advantage of doing it this way is that your data isn’t to some server you don’t trust in the US or China (other than whatever connections your phone routing app makes, I guess).

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the answer.
When you see how GadgetBridge insists on having unecessary permissions such as your contacts, I’m not sure it respects your privacy much.

Do you think I could use a Garmin watch such as a Fenix with notifications turned on and OSMAND arrows would show up on the watch?

Thanks

4

Whether that is unnecessary rather depends on whether you want to know who is trying to get in touch with you are not? If you’re not bothered about that (and in your use case you’re not), just turn that permission off. Also, given that it doesn’t do any network access, what is it even going to do with that data?

1 Like
5

Maybe your definition of “affordable” is different to mine :grinning:

Garmin devices, including at least some watches, support maps created from OSM data natively, so you’d be able to use the regular Garmin UI to give you directions, and have control of what directions it gives you because you’re in charge of the data that you put on it.

1 Like
6

You can find a used Fenix 5 Plus for ~$100.- here in Switzerland.
Quite affordable for such a powerful device :wink: