Getting a new watch face onto Garmin's Connect IQ Store used to take a day or two. Since the start of October, developers are reporting waits of one to two weeks, and Garmin has now confirmed the reason on its own developer forum.
The short version: too many submissions, not enough reviewers, and no timeline for a fix.
That matters more than it sounds. Connect IQ is where Garmin owners go for everything the watch did not ship with. Watch faces, data fields, widgets, whole apps. If that store slows down, the customization that is one of Garmin's biggest selling points slows down with it.
What the Backlog Looks Like From the Inside
Garmin's developer forum has filled up with threads from developers watching their releases sit in limbo. This is not one frustrated post. It is dozens, with dates and app IDs attached.
One new developer listed eight watch faces submitted between October 2 and October 8 that are all still pending, including Monolith, Midnight Manor and Trail Contour. His first face had been approved without trouble, so the account and signing key are fine. He is simply waiting.
Another developer wrote that his paid watch face FlexFace had been pending since October 11, past the three days the store page promises. A third reported a data field pending since October 2 with no rejection and no email. A fourth posted that 17 paid watch faces submitted between October 2 and October 4 were all still stuck.
The pattern repeats across the forum: submissions that used to clear in one or two business days are now sitting for a week to two weeks, covering new faces, new apps and updates to existing ones.
Garmin's Answer: Not a Bug, Just Volume
Garmin has acknowledged the situation rather than staying quiet about it. On October 16, a member of the Connect IQ team replied on the developer forum that the company has seen an enormous influx of app submissions over the past month, with no sign that the volume is slowing down. The delays, by Garmin's account, are not a software fault. The review team is simply outnumbered by the queue.
What Garmin has not offered is a date. No estimate for when normal approval times resume, and no explanation for why merchant accounts are behaving oddly alongside the backlog.
That second detail is its own headache. Several developers report their merchant account flipping from approved back to "In review," which holds up paid releases. One developer wrote that their account was approved by email on October 1, went back to "In review" on October 8, and that nothing had been approved since. It returned to active on October 15, with the apps still pending. Another said their account reverted to "In review" again after they pulled a sales report.
For anyone selling faces, the cost is real. Developers are paying Garmin's annual merchant fee while their products sit invisible in review, missing sales the whole time.
Is AI Flooding the Store?
This is where the story gets more interesting than a support backlog.
Developers are openly asking whether the flood of submissions is being driven by AI-generated watch faces, produced in bulk and pushed out far faster than a human designer could work. Garmin has not confirmed that, and it has released no figures on how many submissions come from AI tools. But the theory is not coming out of nowhere.
A thread on the same forum titled "The Connect IQ Store Is Drowning in AI Slop" has become the flashpoint. In a separate thread about the pending faces, one user posted a link to a developer account with hundreds of releases in two weeks and asked whether Garmin should block accounts like it. Another replied that the name-calling was rich coming from someone who spams look-alike paid faces on Reddit every week. A third pointed back and said that if the first user's account is the one being discussed, almost all of it is AI slop.
The fight is not really about whether AI is involved. It is about what the store should be. One commenter put it plainly: a watch face can be entirely AI-generated and still look good, so the problem is not the tool, it is volume without care. Others want Garmin to cap submissions, with one suggestion being one new app per account per week.
The frustration predates October. Developers have complained for a while that Connect IQ is full of near-identical faces that differ mostly in background art, which buries original work and useful apps under an avalanche of variations.
Garmin Also Got Stricter on Lookalikes
There is a second front, and it works in the opposite direction.
Garmin has tightened its policy on watch faces that copy its own built-in designs. The developer GreenBlack, who had built lookalike faces for other models before, reported that his Forerunner 970 and 570 faces were rejected, with the note that policies had changed and future faces can no longer use Garmin's original designs. It appears the new rule does not reach backward, so already-approved faces stay up.
Taken together, Garmin is squeezing both ends: rejecting faces that imitate its own, while a rules-based reviewer struggles to clear the genuinely new ones in reasonable time.
What This Means for You
If you own a Garmin, none of this breaks your watch. What is already installed keeps working, and updates to approved apps will eventually land.
- New faces and apps are slower to appear. If you have been waiting on something a developer announced, the delay is Garmin's queue, not the developer.
- Sales and discounts on paid faces may lag. A face that is finished and submitted can sit unreleased for two weeks.
- The store is getting more crowded with low-effort designs. That is the builders' complaint, and it makes good faces harder to find regardless of the review speed.
If you are shopping for hardware and customization matters to you, this is a background factor rather than a dealbreaker. A Fenix 8 or a Forerunner 970 still runs everything already approved. You are just less likely to see the newest additions promptly.
Why It Matters Beyond One Store
Connect IQ is the on-device half of Garmin's developer story, and Garmin has spent 2026 making that story more complicated.
In September, Garmin paused new applications to its cloud-side Connect Developer Program, removed the signup form and gave no reopening date, a move we covered here. Then in October, Garmin's new API terms cut off third-party apps that reached Garmin data through outside platforms, and a coaching app shut down rather than wait for the dust to settle, which we wrote about here.
The contrast is hard to miss. The cloud API is closed to newcomers, the third-party data path is tightening, and now the one open door, the on-device store, has a two-week queue at the front of it.
For developers, the message is muddled. Build for the watch, sure, but you may wait two weeks to be listed, and if your face resembles something Garmin already made, it will be rejected.
Bottom Line
Garmin's Connect IQ Store is throttled by its own success or its own neglect, depending on who you ask. The company says the problem is volume. Developers say the volume is mass-produced designs and the fix is better curation and communication.
What everyone agrees on is that the store now takes up to two weeks to approve a watch face, versus the three days its own product pages advertise. Garmin has acknowledged the gap and offered no date for closing it.
Watch faces are the cheapest, most visible thing Garmin owners do with Connect IQ. Until the queue clears, that part of the Garmin experience is running slower than the hardware it sits on.
Sources: Garmin's Connect IQ developer forum (Connect IQ Store Discussion threads including "7 New watch faces stuck in Pending for over a week," "Paid and free watch faces pending since Oct 2 and Oct 11, merchant account back to In Review," and "The Connect IQ Store Is Drowning in AI Slop"), Garmin's Connect IQ team acknowledgement on that forum dated October 16, 2026, Garmin Rumors on the tightened watch face policy and developer GreenBlack's rejected Forerunner 970 and 570 faces, and Gadgets & Wearables' October 17 summary of the backlog.
