Garmin watches reach Beacon through Garmin Connect and Apple Health. Beacon reads what Connect writes, including GPS routes for outdoor sessions.
A quirk worth knowing
In Apple Health, Garmin Connect sometimes identifies itself as just "Connect" — no vendor name at all. Beacon handles that: it resolves the bare name to Garmin, while making sure it doesn't accidentally claim Android's "Health Connect", which is a completely different thing with a confusingly similar name.
The practical effect is that your Garmin sessions are attributed to Garmin rather than landing in an unlabelled pile.
What Beacon gets from it
Whatever Garmin Connect writes to Apple Health. Where a session carries a GPS track, Beacon treats its distance as measured and prefers it over a step-estimated figure from another device you were wearing at the same time.
How it reaches Beacon
Beacon has no direct connection to this device. Its data arrives through Apple Health: the vendor's own app writes to Health, and Beacon reads from there. So what Beacon can see is whatever that app chooses to write — Beacon can't ask for more than the vendor shares.
Two things follow:
- Set up the vendor's app first, and allow it to write to Apple Health. Beacon reads whatever lands.
- Your full history imports. Apple Health is the one connection Beacon reads all the way back, not just the last 90 days.
Attribution
Beacon recognises this device by name, so its readings are credited to it rather than to Apple Health generically. That matters when you wear more than one thing: two sources reporting the same night or the same run are kept apart instead of being averaged into a number that describes neither.