SparminYour spa visit, recorded like a workout.
Sparmin turns a sauna, bathhouse or thermal spa visit into a proper Garmin activity. It times every spot separately — each sauna, steam room, cold plunge, hydro pool and lounger — so you finish with a breakdown instead of one shapeless block of time.
How a session goes
Arrive and start
The activity strip is the home screen. Tap where you are — the timer starts.
Move between spots
Tap the next activity and it switches with no gap. Live heart rate throughout.
Finish with a breakdown
Time, visit count and heart rate for every activity, plus your transition time.
What you get
A real Garmin activity
Your visit is recorded as a FIT activity and syncs to Garmin Connect like any other workout — not a note, not a third-party log.
Timed spot by spot
Each sauna, steam room, cold plunge, hydro pool and lounger is a separate lap, so you see where the time actually went.
Zero-gap switching
Tap the next activity and the last one closes at the same instant. Step out and the app times that as transition time, so nothing goes unaccounted for.
Heart rate that means something
Live heart rate during the session, then average and maximum per activity — the number that tells a sauna from a plunge.
Your list, your order
Show, hide and reorder activities so the places you actually visit are the ones you can reach first.
Fits your watch
Round or rectangular, touchscreen or buttons — the layout adapts. Runs on 94 Connect IQ watches.
Questions
Which watches does it work on?
Any Connect IQ watch running API level 3.1.0 or newer — 94 models, from the vívoactive and Venu lines to Forerunner, fēnix, epix and Instinct. It is built and tested on the vívoactive 5 (touchscreen) and Forerunner 745 (buttons).
What does it record the session as?
A Cardio training activity, with one lap per activity you visited. Each lap is tagged with its activity name, so the breakdown survives the trip into Garmin Connect rather than living only on the watch.
Does it track distance or steps?
No. A spa visit is time and heart rate, not distance — recording it as a distance activity just produced an activity claiming "0 miles". Sparmin records time, per-activity laps and heart rate.
My touchscreen goes haywire when it is wet. Is that a problem?
That is what Water-safe touch mode is for. Turn it on in Settings and selecting an activity takes a deliberate double tap, so a stray droplet cannot start or switch anything. There is also a touch-lock that disables the screen entirely for a full soak — the physical Stop button still works, so you can always end the session.
Can I take my watch into a sauna or a cold plunge?
That is between you and your watch's manufacturer — check the temperature and water-resistance ratings for your model. Sparmin only records what happens; it makes no promises about what your hardware survives.
Does it send my data anywhere?
No. Everything stays on the watch and goes to Garmin Connect through Garmin’s own sync, exactly like a run or a ride. Sparmin has no server and no account.
Something is broken, or an activity I use is missing.
Open an issue on GitHub and I’ll take a look. The app is open source, so you can read the code — and the bug you report is the one I fix next.
Support
Bug, missing activity, or a watch it misbehaves on? Raise it on GitHub. Issues are public, so you can see what is already known and what is being worked on.
Recent changes are listed in the changelog.