Note
This manual covers all devices that RW Gold runs on. Since different devices have different capabilities, not every feature described below may be available on your device.
Contents
- Features
- Premium features
- Layout
- Available data
- Side gauges
- Status icons
- Data sets
- Changing settings on the watch
- Active bar vs Move bar
- Data tracking intervals
- Date
- Weather
- Hand modes
- Power save / AOD
- Colors
Features
- 4 configurable data fields
- 2 side gauges
- 50 data options
- 4 status icon fields
- 4 data sets (switchable by touch)
- 4 AOD modes (full, hands + data, hands, off)
- 5 AOD brightness levels
- Fully customizable date format
- Choice of Garmin or OWM weather
- Customizable color themes
- Launching system widgets by touch
Premium features
All the functions of this app can be accessed without payment.
However, some features are designated as ‘premium’ and marked by a ‘star icon’ next to them in the settings.
If any of these is selected without a valid unlock key, a padlock icon will appear intermittently.
If you don’t want to see the padlock, there are 2 options:
1) Make sure that no option with a ‘star icon’ is selected, or
2) Support the developer’s efforts by purchasing an unlock key here: https://reed.works/rw-gold-unlock/ It will be much appreciated and will contribute to the improvements of this face and creation of new ones.
Layout
The layout is very simple and straightforward:
– Data fields are numbered clockwise starting from 12 o’clock
– Icon fields are numbered clockwise starting from 12 o’clock
Available data
Below is a complete list. The availability of a particular option depends on device capabilities.
- battery level in %
- battery days remaining
- battery % + days
- solar charging level in %
- steps / wheelchair pushes
- steps / pushes goal
- floors climbed
- weekly activity distance (run, bike)
- daily total walk/run distance
- weekly total walk/run distance
- total calories
- active calories
- daily active minutes
- weekly active minutes
- active bar (grows when active)
- move bar (grows when inactive)
- heart rate
- altitude
- barometer
- internal sensor temperature (1 or 0.1 degree accuracy)
- body battery
- stress
- oxygen saturation (SpO2)
- respiration
- time to recovery
- training effect
- VO2 Max (running)
- VO2 Max (running + cycling)
- next sunrise/sunset
- 2nd next sunrise/sunset
- moon age (days since last new moon)
- moon illumination
- moon age + illumination
- UTC 24h time
- alternate time (adjustable for any zone, including 30 min offsets)
- date (fully configurable)
- next Garmin calendar event
- weather (Garmin or Open Weather)
- current temperature and feels like temperature
- temperature range
- wind speed (m/s, kph, mph, knots, BFT) and direction
- humidity
- chance of precipitation
- precipitation volume (OWM only)
- UV index (OWM only)
- AQ index (OWM only)
- last weather update time
Side gauges
The gauges allow choice of data that moves within a defined range, so it can be represented as a gauge growing from the bottom of the face (0%) towards the top (100%).
The gauges double as minute/second marks on the watch perimeter. If you only want minute/second marks, you can set both gauges to ‘Minute marks’.
Status icons
There are 4 status icons available that can be set to any of:
– off
– phone connected (shows when the watch is connected to the Connect app on the phone, disappears when there is no connection)
– notifications (shows when there are pending notifications, disappears when the notifications are cleared). If there is more than 1 notification, the number of pending notifications will be shown.
– alarms (shows when there is at least one active alarm set on the watch)
– do not disturb (shows when the watch is in the Do Not Disturb mode)
Data sets
The ‘Data set’ option allows quick changing of the displayed data configuration, with 4 sets available. Each set keeps the choices for the data fields, the icons and the gauges.
When you choose a data set which was not used before, it will begin with the default settings. Then you can can select the data that you want in this set and save the settings.
The next time you switch to this set from another, your configuration will be restored.
There are several ways to switch the data sets:
1) In the app settings in Garmin Connect
2) Using the watch face ‘Customize’ menu
3) By touching hour marks (12, 3, 6, 9)
Option 3 is only available on compatible devices.
If the switching by touch setting is active, the currently selected data set is identified by an indicator on top of the respective hour mark.
PLEASE NOTE: If you use Garmin Connect to change the data set, you can’t change the dataset in the settings and modify it at the same time. You need to save the settings first, then open again and start the modifications. Otherwise all your changes will apply to the previous dataset. This is how Garmin Connect IQ settings system works.
Changing settings on the watch
Switching between data sets and color themes can be done conveniently on the watch, without the need to reach for the phone.
When you go to the watch face selection menu on your device, besides the ‘Apply’ option, you will see ‘Customize’. When you select it, you will be able to cycle between the 4 data sets by pressing the select key or tapping on the ‘Dataset’ option, or to cycle between the 6 color themes. Once done, press the exit key.
Active bar vs Move bar
These two are the opposites of one another. Move bar grows when you remain inactive and goes down to zero when you start moving. Active bar is 100 when you keep moving, but when you stop it will gradually go down to zero.
Data tracking intervals
The are two settings related to data tracking intervals:
1) ‘Baro tracking minutes’
This affects the sensitivity of the barometer icon. If you want it to show barometric pressure changes within a short span of time, keep it small.
On the other hand, if you are interested in seeing the barometric trends over a longer time span, make it big.
2) ‘HR min/max tracking minutes’
This will determine the range within which the current HR reading moves in the side gauges.
For example, if you set the HR tracking minutes to 120 minutes, the gauge will take the minimum and the maximum HR reading from the recent 120 minutes, and place the current reading relative to these minimum and maximum values.
Date
Date is fully configurable, using the ‘Date format’ field in the settings.
To configure the date, you need to enter any of the following letters in the ‘Date format’ setting:
d = day number without leading zero
D = day number with leading zero
m = month number without leading zero
M = month number with leading zero
y = 2-digit year
Y = 4-digit year
n = day name
c = day name in all caps
N = month name
C = month name in all caps
w = ISO week number
a = AM/PM indicator
| = separates the format for date top and bottom components
= = escape character
Any other character (e.g. – / : . []) will be displayed if it is available on the watch.
The equals sign (escape character) has a special purpose to allow displaying the characters that normally are substituted by the date components they represent. You can use it to put arbitrary text in the date field. For instance you can use it to display ‘am’ or ‘pm’ instead of ‘a’ or ‘p’.
Below are some examples:
“n N d” → Fri Aug 24
“n D.M” → Fri 24.08
“d/m [w]” → 24/8 [34]
“d/m =ww” → 24/8 w34
“YMD” → 2018824
“m-d-y” → 8-24-18
“c D (w)” → FRI 28 (34)
“n D a=m” → Fri 13 am
The date format is composed of two components, separated by the “|” symbol. The format before the “|” symbol goes in the place when an icon is shown for most other data.
Weather
Weather source can be selected between Garmin (default) and Open Weather Map (OWM).
For the OWM weather you need to supply your own API key.
OpenWeather key validity
Please note that OpenWeather continue changing their free subscription policies so a key that used to work before might stop working one day.
Currently subscription to “One Call by Call” plan for One Call API 3.0 is known to work. This subscription comes with 1,000 API calls per day for free, and RW Gold will not exceed 300 calls per day (3 calls every 15 minutes).
How to get OpenWeather API key
Go to https://openweathermap.org/api and subscribe to One Call API 3.0 (1,000 API calls per day for free).
Update frequency
Garmin weather updates as often as Garmin decides to refresh it – it seems that it can be anything between 10 minutes to 1 hour.
OWM weather updates every 15 minutes.
Temperature range
When Garmin weather is selected, this shows the forecasted high and low temperatures for the day.
When OWM weather is selected, this shows the forecasted high and low temperatures for the next 3 hours.
Precipitation
When Garmin weather source is selected, the chance of precipitation is derived from the ‘current condition’ (and not a forecast).
When OWM weather source is selected, the chance of precipitation and the volume in mm is a 3 hour forecast.
Hand modes
On compatible devices, it is possible to choose between two ways of displaying the hands:
1) On top
2) Blended with the underlying image. This mode allows to ‘see through’ the hands which may be helpful to monitor the displayed data regardless of the hands’ position. Note that the actual result may depend to some extent on the choice of colors for the data and the hands.
3) Below data
Power save / AOD
This setting defines what is shown when the watch is in AOD mode on AMOLED devices, or when RW Gold is in ‘Power save’ mode on MIP devices.
The available choices are:
– Full (all data will be shown)
– Hands and data
– Hands
– Off
On AMOLED devices, the selected AOD mode kicks in as soon as the watch enters the AOD state.
On MIP devices, there is a setting to activate the power save mode called ‘Power save activation’, with 3 choices (Off, On, On Do not Disturb). While in power save mode, the behavior is similar as on AMOLED devices – a wrist gesture (or a screen tap or button press) brings up the full power display for a couple of seconds, then the watch face goes back to the selected power save display.
On AMOLED devices, AOD brightness can be adjusted with 5 levels. If you are concerned about the screen burn-in, the lower levels should be safer.
Colors
There are 6 predefined color themes that can be selected in Garmin Connect IQ or using the watch face ‘Customize’ menu on the watch.
Each theme can be adjusted by entering the desired colors for different screen elements in RW Gold settings in Garmin Connect IQ.
Note that for some screen elements, the color customization does not replace the default color of the screen element, but rather adds to it. So the customization possibilities are limited by the original colors (shown when customization is ffffff).
The colors are entered in hexadecimal RGB format which stands for Red, Green and and Blue color components. So each color is composed of 6 hexadecimal digits RRGGBB, where RR is the level of the red component, GG is the level of the green and BB is the blue.
By setting each color component to a hex number ranging from 0 to 255 (ff) you define the color that results from the combination of these three components.
This may seem a bit complicated, but currently it seems to be the only practical way of accessing the thousands of colors available on the AMOLED devices.
In practice, the granularity of the color palette on a particular device might be such that not every change in the color definition will produce a visible change in the displayed color. This is especially true for the MIP devices.
For a rough guide to RGB hex color codes, you can refer to the map below, which gives the codes for the basic colors supported by MIP devices.
The new colors that you enter to modify the theme will be kept with the theme after saving the settings. So if you make changes to the themes, when you switch between them your changes will be preserved.
However, please be aware that you can’t switch the theme and try to customize it at the same time. You must save the settings after switching the theme, only then open again to make theme adjustments. Otherwise your themes will get messed up. This is a limitation of how the Garmin settings system works and as of the time of writing, there is no way around it.
If your themes get messed up anyway, you can always bring them back to the default by activating the ‘Reset colors’ switch and saving the settings. This will only have effect on the currently selected theme.