On rare occasions, there can be an unexpected issue while your license key is validated by Garmin. When that happens, you may see the watch say things like: “Waiting for Garmin to check key” or “Waiting for Garmin to validate”.
You may be able to learn more by opening the Connect IQ app on your phone, opening the settings for the watch face, and inspecting the status displayed in the “License Status” field. For example, you may see a message like: "Free trial & Internet was not available to validate”, which would indicate that your watch was having trouble connecting to the internet to confirm the license.
You can also see this “License Status” information directly on the watch by activating the on-device settings menu and then scrolling down to the licensing information.
Possible messages and their meanings
“Free trial & Key is empty”
This means that there’s no license key entered. To enter a license key, please follow these instructions:
How do I activate my license?“Free trial & Waiting for Garmin to check key”
To preserve battery, Garmin only lets your watch connect to the internet once every 5 minutes. If you see this message, it means the watch is waiting for the next opportunity to connect to the internet and try your key.
If you see this message repeatedly or for more than 10 or 15 minutes, something else may be wrong with your connectivity.
“Free trial & Key format is invalid”
The watch will automatically let you know if the key you’ve entered is too short or too long. If you see this message, please double check that you copy & pasted the key correctly without losing any characters or adding any spaces before/after the key.
“Free trial & Bluetooth or internet problem”
This message indicates that the watch did not attempt to validate the license key you’ve entered because it did not detect an internet connection. When this happens, please follow the steps below to confirm your watch can connect to the internet. Even if you think your watch is connected to your phone, it is possible that the connection is temporarily not working.
“Free trial & Key could not lock”
You’ll see this message when you’ve entered a license key that seems to be valid but there’s some issue securing the lock needed to activate the license on your particular device. This is likely a system error, so you can wait and see if it resolves itself or contact us for help.
Contact“Free trial & Key could not unlock”
If you previously had entered a key that was validated, this is the message you might see if you removed the key from watch face settings in ConnectIQ but the watch was unable to tell our servers that it was no longer using the key. This may prevent you from transferring the key to another device. If you see this message, please wait a little while to see if it automatically resolves. Note that Garmin only lets the watch talk to the internet once every 5 minutes, so it has to wait 5 minutes between attempts. If this message does not go away, please contact us:
Contact“Free trial & Failed to validate”
This is a generic error message that indicates something went wrong during validation, but the details aren’t totally clear. Please contact us if you see this message:
Contact“Free trial & Key for wrong product”
You’ll see this message if you entered a key for a different product or bundle than the one you are attempting to unlock. For example, if you purchased a key for Watch Face A and entered it in Watch Face B, you’d see this message. Please re-read your original payment confirmation email to confirm which products the key unlocks.
“Free trial & Key is disabled”
This message indicates that some payment issue caused your license to be deactivated. This could result from a subscription that’s been cancelled or some other payment. If you have a subscription, please review the status of your subscription by following these steps:
How do I manage my subscription?“Free trial & Key already in use”
Our licenses can only be used on one watch per watch face. This message indicates that the key you’ve entered is currently considered “in use” by another watch.
For example, if you purchase the Motorsports (Value Bundle), it entitles you to a license for each of the included watch faces on exactly one watch each. You can enter the license key on all of the included watch faces on the same watch. And if you have multiple watches, you can even split them up. But each watch face can only be licensed to one watch at a time per license key
Once a license key is validated, it’s temporarily locked to that device. That marks the key so that it cannot be used again. You can easily transfer the license to another device by following these steps: How do I transfer a license to a new watch?
“Free trial & Key not recognized”
This message confirms that you’ve entered a key of the correct size that was checked via the internet but didn’t match a license key on file. That could mean the key was entered incorrectly.
Confirming Phone & Watch Connectivity
Here are some steps to confirm your watch & phone can properly validate the key:
- Ensure your phone:
- Is powered on
- Has the Garmin Connect app and the Garmin ConnectIQ app installed & updated to the latest versions
- Connected to the internet (either strong cell service or a wifi service)
- Sometimes your phone can look connected to WiFi but not have a valid internet connection. Try opening the Garmin ConnectIQ app and browsing the store of watch faces to confirm that you have a full internet connection (and not just access to a local network).
- Has bluetooth enabled
- Nearby to your watch (within about 5 feet to ensure the best connection)
- Ensure your watch:
- Is updated to the latest Garmin software (see Garmin’s page for more)
- Synced to your phone within the last 90 seconds of starting the watch face app. A sync will “warm up” the bluetooth connection, which occasionally can go to sleep even when you watch is connected.
- Has a bluetooth connection to your phone active.
- If you experience any difficulties getting your watch to pair with your phone, please see Garmin’s page here.
- Ensure the watch face you want to validate is active on the screen
Retrying Validation
Sometimes you just need to retry the validation again later. If you’ve confirmed that your watch has an internet connection (via your phone), then you can attempt a retry.
The basic way
Each time the watch face launches, it will attempt to validate a key you’ve entered. To get the watch to retry, switch to another watch face for a moment. Then switch back to the one you want to validate.
The more advanced way
If the above method does not eventually get the validation to work, one additional step you can try is to make sure the watch face is running and then remove your license key from the Garmin ConnectIQ app settings. Be sure to click “Save” to apply the change. You should see a message on your watch confirming that the key is not there.