The best Garmin watch faces in 2026, tested on a real wrist

I build watch faces for a living, and I install everyone else's. This list is what actually survives on my Venu 3 and Fenix, including faces by other developers that I'd recommend without hesitation. Disclosure up front: the ones marked "mine" are mine.

The Connect IQ store has thousands of watch faces, and most of them are a static picture with a clock on top. The ones below are the exception: faces that draw themselves from your data, respect your battery, support always-on displays properly, and give you real settings. Prices run from nothing to a few dollars, and every face sold through Garmin's built-in payment comes with a 48-hour return window, so trying one costs nothing.

Best data-rich faces

My Day 24 (paid, mine). My answer to "everything at a glance" is a 24-hour dial. Three rings around the time show your real daylight from sunrise to sunset, the sleep you actually got with deep and light phases in different shades, and 24 hours of heart rate in your own zones. You see the shape of your day in one look. In the middle sit the digital time, four data fields and a step-goal bar.

Colorama (paid, mine) is a measuring instrument from the sixties, with a diver's turning ring round the rim. Four coloured rings show today's steps, Body Battery, heart rate and stress, and every one of them carries a printed scale with real graduations, so you read a value off it the way you read a gauge. The weather sits at the top as three temperatures: now, in three hours and in six. You choose what each ring measures, there are eight colourways, and a long press on anything opens the app behind it. This is the one to pick if you want a lot of data and a calm dial at the same time.

Segment34 MkII (free) is the community favourite, and it earns it: a dense layout in the style of the Apollo spacecraft keypad, with a remarkable amount of data in a grid you can still read. 100,000 installs and a 4.9 rating from more than 1,600 reviews. There is now a Segment34 MkIII as well, also free, at 10,000 installs and a 5.0 rating, and its store record shows the more recent update. Try MkIII first. If you want everything at a glance and like the retro look, this family is where to start.

Infocal (free) is the long-standing configurable classic, with a long feature list and 100,000 installs. Its store record shows the last approved update in 2019, and the community has carried the idea on since, in variants such as Infocal Redux. Still worth a look on an older watch.

Crystal (free) has a million installs and its source on GitHub, and it has been forked more than any other face I know. The original listing was last updated in 2018. The same developer's ground-up rewrite, Crystal Reborn, is where the work happens now, and that one is paid.

Best analog and minimalist faces

Half Time (paid, mine). The dial is four times bigger than the screen, so you only ever see the few hours around the present one. Giant numerals glide under a bold pointer as the time passes. A day-night ring along the edge is coloured by your real sunrise and sunset, and the other side of the screen takes three data fields, two circles, or nothing at all. It reads from further away than anything else I have worn.

Rondo Analog (paid) is the analog face I hold my own up against: clean, carefully finished, a 4.9 rating from around 670 reviews, and a long list of dated releases behind it. There is a separate free listing, Rondo Analog Demo, so you can wear it for a while before paying.

Best mechanical and skeleton faces

These three are mine, and they follow one rule: the movement, the machine of wheels inside a mechanical watch, has to be one you could build. Every wheel has the tooth count of a real one, its teeth reach its neighbours, and it stands at the angle the time gives it. The parts are drawn as metal under a light: a bright silvery plate, wheels the colour of gold, red stone bearings in gold rings, screws turned blue by heat, and a polished slope filed along the edge of every beam. Raise your wrist and the wheels run.

Skeleton Tourbillon (paid, mine) has nothing covering the movement, so the plate, the beams over the wheels and all eleven wheels are in view. The gearing is real. The drum that holds the mainspring turns once in eight hours, the hour wheel once in twelve, and the gears slow the drive down 480 times on the way to the tourbillon. That is the small cage at six o'clock, which turns once a minute and carries the seconds pointer. Raise your wrist and the timekeeping parts beat 28,800 times an hour, so the hands step round the way they do on a mechanical watch instead of sweeping. You choose two gauges to show, and there are five colourways.

Regulator (paid, mine) splits the time three ways, the way the reference clocks in old workshops did. The hours have their own ring in the upper half, the long central hand shows the minutes, and the seconds turn in a small dial at the bottom, so no hand ever hides another. A turning cage sits at six with the timekeeping parts inside it, and the lower of the two gauges shows how much the mainspring has left. You can pick from five accent colours and four metals for the wheels, and the hour numerals come in Roman, in Arabic or as plain batons.

Skeleton Bridge (paid, mine) keeps the middle of the dial open, so the hours and the minutes stay easy to read while the machine runs around them. The whole movement stands on one narrow diagonal beam. The beam is built like a railway bridge, with a rail along each side and a zigzag of struts between them. On each side of it a geared gauge does its work in the open: a toothed bar swings, a small toothed wheel turns with it, and a marker rides along a scale to show the reading. Each gauge can show any of twelve readings. While the movement runs, the wheel that keeps the time rocks under its own vee-shaped bracket, and the seconds hand is out on the beam.

Smoked Crystal (paid, mine) is the newest of the four, and the quietest. A smoked sapphire dial lies over a working movement, so the wheels and the beams over them show through the tinted glass, veiled and coloured by it. The date and the weather are cut clean through the glass, which makes them the only things on the dial at full contrast. It comes in blue, graphite and bronze, and it is the one to pick if you like the idea of a movement but want a calm dial to read.

Best free faces

Free is where most people start, so here are the three of mine that cost nothing, and one of the store's giants.

Activity Graph (free, mine): the last four hours of heart rate, altitude and temperature as a live chart under the time, filled in from your own history the moment you install it. Heart rate is white bars over your zones, with your minimum and maximum flagged. Altitude is a green profile, climbs bright and descents dark. If you hike or run hills, that profile alone earns the spot.

Stardome (free, mine) draws the real sky above you: 734 stars from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 53 constellation figures, the Milky Way crossing where it really crosses, the Moon in its true phase, and the visible planets by name. The time is written into the sky as small constellations whose corners sit on real stars. All of it is computed on the watch for your place and the current minute.

Avionis (free, mine) is a glass cockpit. Two aircraft-style gauges read out on scrolling scales, and you pick what each one shows. A compass arc at the top carries a magenta marker for your step goal. A day line runs the sun from sunrise to sunset, and at night it becomes the moon in its real phase. It is typeset in B612, the typeface drawn for Airbus cockpit displays.

GLANCE watch face (free, with paid Pro and Ultra siblings) has over a million installs and a 4.9 rating from more than 67,000 reviews, far more than anything else on this list. Garmin gave it the Connect IQ Developer Award for the best new watch face of 2022. Its developer runs one of the most active support threads on the Garmin forums, and the community around it is half the product.

If you want something nobody else has

Three more of mine are for people who want a dial that nobody at the next table will recognise, and all three are paid. Auralis paints waves of light from your body: stress or Body Battery picks the colours, live heart rate shapes the sea, and the scene follows the real sun from dawn glow to stars. Mandalis grows a mandala from your rhythm, with petals that sharpen when your pulse is up and a bloom that opens as you close on your step goal. Daedal hides the time inside an ink labyrinth among fake digits, and it regenerates the maze every minute, so it can't be learned from a photo. Raise your wrist and the false ink retreats for a few seconds.

Frequently asked questions

Are paid Garmin watch faces worth it?

The good ones, yes. Almost every paid face on the store costs a few dollars, and mine are priced like the rest of that line. What the money buys is battery behaviour that was tested, always-on support done right, readable data and real settings. Garmin's 48-hour return window means a paid face is try-before-you-buy.

Do watch faces drain the battery?

Badly built ones do. Look for faces that state always-on support and per-minute (not per-second) updates in standby. Everything on this list behaves.

How do I return a watch face?

Purchases through Garmin's built-in Connect IQ payment can be returned within 48 hours: Garmin doesn't even capture the payment until the window passes. Some faces on the store sell through their own third-party payment instead; those follow the developer's own rules.

Will these work on my watch?

The My Day 24 faces run on every color-display Garmin watch with Connect IQ System 7 or newer, in practice everything since the 2021 Venu 2: Fenix 7/8/9, Forerunner 165-970, Venu 2/3/4, vivoactive 5/6, epix, Enduro 3, Instinct AMOLED and more. Every store page lists the exact models.

The author builds the My Day 24 watch face family. Published 2026-09-08.