Easier selection of which segments to sync to Garmin live segments

[anderfo]

Hi,

in this thread I proposed a feature and was told it was a great idea which I should definitely share here instead. So let's do that...

Whenever you want to have live segments on your Garmin device, it will only sync the last 100 segments you have starred/favorited. Sometimes you might have a lot of starred segments, such as segments from multiple different activity types (in my case, "Ride", "Nordic skiing" and "Virtual Ride"/Zwift). Sometimes you might have lots of them just because you've used them to keep track of nice climbs you want to visit, around your country or even abroad.

However, if you want to go to a specific location or ride a specific route, for example when planning a vacation, you would probably want to sync only one portion of these starred segments to your Garmin, to get Live Segments while e.g. cycling.

Today this is a very tedious process: I am planning a summer vacation and had to go through 28 pages of starred segments (about 25 segments per page?) and unstar them all, one by one (for all activity types and so on), which took a lot of time and now I have basically lost all my favorites. Next, I had to sync to Garmin (i.e. remove all live segments), then go through all the routes I aim to do this summer and star all the nice climbs I want to ride. They were already starred previously, but I did not have the capacity to "filter" them easily while unstarring many hundred segments... Finally, sync to Garmin again.

Now to the idea: I wish I could go to some sort of "Segment explore" map view with all my starred segments and select for which "regions of interest" I want to sync the segments for (to Garmin) and for which activity types (e.g., to avoid it from syncing segments from virtual rides or nordic skiing when I go for summer vacation).

Alternatively, give me some way to to automatically sync all my favorite segments that are part of or really close to the routes I have recently starred...

Feel free to support this idea with improvements or simplifications 🙂

[Silentvoyager]

I made a similar suggestion in the past.

Starring segments has a different original purpose. I always starred segments as a way to bookmark them so that I could find them in the future. Many segments are difficult to discover, especially the longer ones. I also star segments as a way to unhide them and to boost their popularity.

Overloading the same starring system as a way to mark them for syncing is just wrong in my opinion, especially that having too many segments starred is known to lead to syncing issues on the Garmin side.

There has to be a separate toggle for each segment whether it should be synced to an external device. 

[Soren]

Thanks so much for sharing this suggestion regarding starred segments. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting. We appreciate the discussion happening around this and appreciate your comments and ideas!

[pblesf]

A great addition to this would be to increase the limit. Newer Garmin devices have plenty of memory available, and limiting to 100 feels unnecessary.

[SBPedersen]

To be able to race live segments is the decisive feature that makes me renew my Strava subscription. The fact that Strava maintains its Garmin synch cap at about 100 segments even though Garmin devices today have plenty of memory is ridiculous. It forces us to constantly prune our favorited segments when all we want to do is race and not think about an arbitrary and obsolete ceiling that Strava imposes on its paying customers. And it's especially annoying when you routinely cycle in different areas or when you go on holiday.

[anderfo]

@Silentvoyager I agree, it would be better to have a separate toggle (in addition to «Favorite»/star) for syncing to Garmin or other devices, it’s a very different function.

But this toggle could/should activate automatically when you transfer a new route containing some of your starred/favorited segments…

Today it looks like I need to unhide and star the segment(s) I’d like to show up before I even create the route (!). At least, I made a route, then looked for suitable segments along that route, starred them and synced to Garmin, without getting any «live segments» to show up at all. I have about 50 starred segments at the moment, so far below the limit of 100. Re-trying later same day, I created a new route containing some of the same segments, and at least a couple of them popped up. Not any of the longer segments, only some very short climbs. I don’t know why it refuses to sync the longer segments…

[anderfo]

This is still an ongoing issue.

In March I went to Italy and had two days of cycling there.

First I created a bunch of routes, so I had a few options depending on weather and so on. I found some suitable segments and starred them, but they did not become part of the route. So I had to first unstar every segment in Strava (plenty of segments!), then star the relevant segments for this vacation again. Then I had to delete and recreate every route I had planned. Then manually clear these routes from Garmin and re-upload them (involves lots of issues and only 2 of 10 routes actually synced until I did manual unstarring and starring in both Strava and Garmin Connect. Finally, I ended up doing two of the routes I made, but during one of the rides I had to turn around due to weather and switched to a different route, so I basically did parts of 3 different routes. My starred segments only worked in one of the three...

So, lots of hassle (for just two days of riding) and very unreliable!

Next week I'm doing a race close to my town in Norway. Now I've had to unstar all the italian routes and segments and re-star the route and segments for this race - but since these have been unstarred (due to my two days of riding abroad) I believe I'll have to recreate the route from scratch. Again, plenty of hassle just because I rode abroad for two days (and wanted "Live segments").

Please have a look at this. To make a simple selection of segments to sync might not be a very difficult task and would simplify the process for everyone using Live segments for anything.

PS. I notice my link in the original post does not work - the "permalink" function in this board gives something that isn't a URL at all (!). But here's a link that should work...

[KerkepadRider]

No reason given for limiting live segments to only 100  - WHY?? Who is at fault Strava or Garmin??

[Silentvoyager]

Another factor to consider is that when we unstar a segment as a part of managing segments on Garmin device, that makes it more likely for Strava to hide that segment. 

Consider the following case. In trail running it is very common to have multiple segments starting at the same trailhead because there may be multiple possible routes. When I am preparing for a run, I may want to target one of a few possible segments starting at that trailhead. The problem is that in some cases it makes it nearly impossible to find other segments again. Also, those segments become at increased risk of becoming hidden. I particularly like very long segments which are more like FKT efforts. But those segments are naturally less popular which makes them candidates of being hidden.