Garmin releases notice to Forerunner smartwatch owners after new update causes system crashes

Garmin kicked off a round of beta development for currently supported Forerunner smartwatches with the release of Beta Version 24.04. Please note that Garmin has not added the recent Forerunner 570 or Forerunner 970 to its Beta Program yet. Instead, arrived for the Forerunner 165, Forerunner 255, Forerunner 265, Forerunner 955 and Forerunner 965 (curr. $499 on Amazon), almost a month after those smartwatches became eligible to download System Software 23.20.

On the face of it, Beta Version 24.04 only introduced bug fixes, unlike the start of prior beta testing phases. Unfortunately, beta testers quickly observed that the new beta had started to cause all compatible Forerunner smartwatches to crash in some instances. From what we can understand, the system crash can occur when viewing Garmin Coach suggestions from the Run, Training and Workout menus.

As a result, Garmin has suspended the rollout of Beta Version 24.04 with immediate effect. At this stage, the company has not revealed many details about when the Beta Program will return for its previous generation Forerunner smartwatches. In the meantime, it has posted the following pinned post across all Beta Version 24.04 forum posts:

Thanks to the help provided by the Beta Forums Community, we have identified a disruption causing the watch to crash while running 24.04 software. For this reason, we have removed access to this software version. We should have a new version available soon which will not be subject to this disruption. Thank you for your participation and patience.