Factory reset of the Garmin Instinct

The first step of course is to download Garmin Connect from the Android store and install it. That is easy enough. Next I fire it up and enter my Garmin password. Next I select my Instinct device.

The Instinct must be in blue tooth pairing mode. Here is how to achieve that.

• Hold down the menu button (center left)
• Go down to Settings
• Push GPS to select settings.
• Go downto pair phone
• Use GPS to select "pair phone"

I simply keep restarting this and trying again and eventually my instinct displays a 6 digit code. I enter it into the phone app, and I am in business.

Now it asks me a million questions. I agree to allow notifications, phone calls, SMS traffic and more things than I remember. I hope I don't regret all this and that I am able to turn things off if I find this obnoxious (I am already finding the notifications obnoxious, as it is telling me about every email that arrives.

It is busy syncing steps and activity data, which probably will take a while since I have been using the watch for 6 months without any ability to transfer information to garmin connect.

New software

I power off the watch anyway. You hold down CTRL (upper left) until you get a menu, select power off, then press GPS to do it. To power it on, you press and hold CTRL a second or so until it starts up.