My Garmin fēnix® 8 is Stuck in Dive Mode

There might be circumstances where your fēnix® 8 watch could enter dive mode and start a dive while you are not actually diving. If this occurs, the watch will no longer show the watch face, but instead will display only the dive screens and the back button will be disabled. To address this, the surface pressure will need to be reset on the watch.

Resetting Surface Pressure on a fēnix 8 Watch

There are two ways that you can reset the surface pressure on your watch. The first method is to plug the watch in to a computer and once the watch connects to the computer and shows the USB symbol on the watch face, the surface pressure will reset. You can then unplug the watch.

If you do not have access to a computer, you can follow the steps below to reset the surface pressure from the watch itself:

1. Hold LIGHT (upper left button) until the watch powers off.

2. Hold LIGHT (upper left button) to turn the watch back on.

3. Hold MENU (middle left button) when the fēnix 8 loading screen appears.

4. Continue holding the MENU (middle left button) until the "Reset Surface Pressure?" prompt appears.

5. Wait on the prompt for 60-90 seconds before selecting Yes. Waiting allows the watch calibrate the correct surface pressure.

6. Choose Yes to set the current pressure as the surface pressure. 

Once these steps are completed, depth will go to 0 and the dive will end after the normal end-of-dive timeout.

Adjusting Auto Dive Settings

The fēnix 8 watches also offer the ability to snooze or turn off the auto dive setting on the watch. If you know that you are going to be in a situation when the watch might enter a dive, such as swimming without starting a swim activity or flying in a plane, you may want to adjust the auto dive setting to avoid the watch erroneously starting a dive.

1. Hold MENU.

2. Select  Watch Settings. 

3. Select System. 

4. Select Depth Sensor.

5. Select an option:

   • Auto Dive: Choose for auto dive to use either the last dive profile accessed on the watch or for auto dive to be off entirely.

   • Snooze: Choose to temporarily disable auto dive for 1 hour or until tomorrow. Snoozing until tomorrow will count down until midnight. After the snooze timer ends, auto dive will automatically reengage. If you have snoozed auto dive, you can also choose to end the snooze early from this menu.