Dotpace: Minimalist Garmin Watch Face

Dotpace is a minimal dot-matrix watch face for Garmin Connect IQ devices, built by the same team behind Runima. Its newest release adds a Trends page: a 90-day history for four of your watch's own health metrics, charted the way we'd chart them on a dashboard — right on your wrist, no phone required.

The dot-matrix look

Dotpace centres the time in Doto, a rounded dot-matrix typeface, with your chosen stats arranged in calm, even rows of dots around it. No gradients, no clutter — just clean type that reads at a glance, in direct sunlight or at 2am.

It ships two layouts in one app. Rows puts two stats above the time and two below, with the date shifting to frame whichever side is emptier — leave a slot empty and a lone stat recentres against the screen edge. Cross pins one stat to each of the four screen edges with time dead-centre.

Four generic metric slots fill clockwise, so you can choose from Steps, Heart Rate, Stress, Body Battery, Breathing Rate, Recovery Time, Watch Battery, Calories, Active Calories, Floors, Distance, Intensity Minutes, Pulse Ox, Weather, Notifications, Sunrise/Sunset and Phone Connection — or leave any slot blank.

Track your trends, right on your wrist

Each metric gets its own dot-and-line chart: a rounded axis, a scatter point for every logged day, and a trend arrow comparing your recent average against where you started. An overview page lines up all four at a glance first, so you can see what's moving before opening a single chart. A single VO₂max reading tells you almost nothing on its own — the same number can be climbing or falling depending on where it started. The chart is what turns it into something you can actually act on.

All Trends history is computed and stored on the watch itself — nothing is uploaded anywhere to draw these charts.

Make it yours

Colour the hour and minute digits independently, and pick separate colours for your metric values and their labels. The palette runs thirty-two tones deep — sixteen bright shades for a punchy, high-contrast look, sixteen deeper shades for something quieter, plus white, black and grey. Pair that with Dark or Light theme, and Dotpace scales pixel-perfectly across 100+ round Garmin watches, from 218px dials up to 454px AMOLED flagships.

Shaped by feedback

Dotpace's roadmap runs on user requests, not a fixed plan. The Trends page exists because people asked for a way to see VO₂max and Stress history without opening an app; the metric list, the two layouts, the palette depth all trace back to the same kind of ask. Whatever Connect IQ's SDK allows for a requested feature, we build it — this release includes everything the platform currently permits for the requests we'd had.

Your data stays on your watch

Dotpace only reads what it needs to draw the face and its Trends charts: the time and date, the stats you choose to show, current weather, your watch's last known location for sunrise and sunset, and your profile only when Active Calories or VO₂max is shown. No accounts, no analytics, no network requests — nothing is collected, stored off-device, or sent anywhere, including to Runima. There's no account to link and no sync between the two.

Get it

Dotpace is available now, free, on the Connect IQ Store — search "Dotpace" from the Connect IQ app on your phone or at apps.garmin.com.

Garmin®, Connect IQ™, and the Garmin logo are trademarks of Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries, registered in the USA and other countries, and are used here only to describe compatibility. Dotpace is a third-party application built with the Connect IQ SDK; Runima and Dotpace are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Garmin.