Garmin Watch Face Designer - Custom Watch Faces for Free

What Is the Garmin Watch Face Designer?

The Garmin Watch Face Designer is a free online tool for planning the layout of a custom Garmin watch face. A user arranges five display elements — time, date, step count, heart rate, and battery level — on a preview of a circular or rectangular watch screen, picks colors and font sizes, then saves the layout or downloads it as a file. The tool is a design and planning aid. It does not install a working watch face on a Garmin device by itself; turning a layout into software that actually runs on a watch requires Garmin's own Connect IQ development tools, covered further down.

How the Design Canvas Works

The preview canvas is a square, either shown with rounded corners (rectangular shape) or as a circle (circular shape), matching the watch's screen shape. Each element sits at a position given as a percentage of the canvas width and height, not in pixels. This keeps the layout independent of screen size.

When an element is dragged, its new position is calculated as:

1x% = (mouse x position on canvas / canvas width) × 100
2y% = (mouse y position on canvas / canvas height) × 100
3

Both values are limited to a range of 0 to 100, so an element can never be dragged off the visible face.

Worked example. The preview canvas is 280 pixels square. Dragging the heart-rate element to a point 210 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top gives:

1x% = (210 / 280) × 100 = 75
2y% = (210 / 280) × 100 = 75
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That matches the tool's own starting position for the heart-rate element, which is placed at x = 75, y = 75 (lower right of the face) by default.

The Five Elements and Their Starting Values

Every new design opens with these defaults:

The time element is always shown in bold text in the preview, regardless of the font size chosen. Choosing "large" for any other element also makes it bold; "small" and "medium" are not bold.

Each element can be shown or hidden, recolored with a color picker, resized (small, medium, or large), and dragged anywhere on the canvas. The preview displays sample figures rather than live data: the time element shows 10:30 (or 10:30 AM in 12-hour format), the date shows a sample date, steps show 7,845, heart rate shows 72 BPM, and battery shows 85%. These numbers only illustrate how the layout will look; they are not read from an actual watch.

Time and Date Format Options

Time can be shown as 24-hour (10:30) or 12-hour (10:30 AM). Date can be shown in three formats:

• DD/MM, e.g. 15/06
• MM/DD, e.g. 06/15
• DD/MM/YY, e.g. 15/06/23

How to Create a Design

1. Choose a watch model and shape. The model dropdown offers six options: Forerunner 245, Forerunner 945, Fenix 6, Fenix 7, Venu, and Venu 2. Shape is either circular or rectangular. The model name is stored with the design for reference; it does not change how the export file is built.
2. Pick a background color using the color picker.
3. Add elements to the canvas by clicking one, then dragging it to a position on the preview.
4. Adjust each element: toggle visibility, set its text color, choose a font size, and, for time and date, choose a format.
5. Save the design by typing a name and selecting "Save Design." Saved designs are written to the browser's local storage, not to a server, so they only reappear on the same browser and device, not automatically on other devices.
6. Export the design to download it as a file (see below), or use "Copy Design JSON" to copy the same data to the clipboard.

Selecting "Reset Positions" moves every element back to its default coordinates without changing colors or visibility. Selecting "Reset" clears the whole design back to the starting defaults.

What the Export File Actually Contains

Clicking "Export Watch Face" downloads a .json text file holding the design's name, watch model label, shape, background color, and the list of elements with their positions, colors, sizes, and formats. It is a structured description of the layout, useful for saving a design outside the browser, sharing it with someone else, or keeping a record of a chosen color scheme.

It is not a compiled watch face that a Garmin device can run. Garmin smartwatches run watch faces built with Connect IQ, Garmin's software development kit, which compiles a program in the Monkey C language into a device-specific binary. That binary is installed through Garmin Express, the Connect IQ Store, or a developer's own sideloading process — not by copying a JSON file to the watch over USB. Anyone who wants the exact layout produced here to run on a real watch needs to recreate it as a Connect IQ project, using the exported JSON as a specification of colors, positions, and formats to follow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this tool put a watch face on my Garmin device? No. It produces a design layout and a JSON file describing that layout. Getting a working watch face onto a Garmin device requires building it with Garmin's Connect IQ tools, or choosing a ready-made watch face from the Connect IQ Store.

Is the Garmin Watch Face Designer free? Yes. It runs in a browser with no download, account, or payment required.

Does it require coding? No coding is needed to use the designer itself. Elements are placed with drag-and-drop, and colors and formats are chosen from menus.

Will my saved designs be there if I switch computers? No. Designs are saved in the browser's local storage on one device. They do not sync across devices or browsers.

Which watch models can I choose? The tool lists six models: Forerunner 245, Forerunner 945, Fenix 6, Fenix 7, Venu, and Venu 2. This is a label attached to the saved design, not a device-specific export format.

What formats are available for the time and date? Time can be 12-hour or 24-hour. Date can be DD/MM, MM/DD, or DD/MM/YY.

Design Tips

Contrast between text and background matters most for readability, especially outdoors. Keeping the time element large and central, with only three or four other elements, avoids a cluttered face. Dark backgrounds tend to be easier to read at a glance and are commonly recommended for OLED-type watch screens, since darker pixels use less power on that screen technology. Grouping related information, such as heart rate near steps, gives the layout a clearer structure than scattering elements evenly.