Garmin reveals how to re-enable ECG functionality on recent smartwatches alongside delivering new update

Garmin is ending January with another beta update for the Venu 3 and Venu 3S. While the company tends to roll out weekly beta builds to the Fenix 7 series, equivalents for the Venu 3 series have been few and far between. Until this month, Garmin had only delivered two beta builds for its Venu 3 models since their August 2023 launch.

However, less than three weeks have elapsed between the release of Beta 9.15, Beta 9.16 and Beta 9.18. For some reason, all contain similar changelogs with mentions of adding a jump rope activity and new male audio prompts, among several bug fixes. Garmin unceremoniously disabled ECG functionality across the Venu 3 range with Beta 9.16 though, which the company explained as follows:

Important note about ECG App: Moving forward, the Beta software available for the Venu 3/3S will have the ECG feature disabled. If you would prefer to keep the ECG App feature accessible on your watch, we recommend not participating in the Public Beta program. The ECG App feature will be made available again on versions of beta software that we anticipate becoming Live updates. In other words, you will see the ECG feature become enabled again in Beta software toward the end of our quarterly beta cycles. The ECG App feature will remain available with Live software updates (on compatible watches).

Not only did the lack of prior warning draw ire from various Beta Program participants, but so did the lack of help for returning to stable builds. Thankfully, Garmin has now listened to participants who took to its Community Discussion forum to raise the lack of stable rollback files. Please see the advice below for returning a Venu 3 to Stable Version 8.28, including a download link to the associated zip file that Garmin hosts on its servers.