Got a new Garmin watch? One hidden gesture control can return you to home and even lock your touchscreen

Date:
Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:28:50 +0000

Description:
Deep in your Garmin watchs maze of menus? One quick gesture should get you back to home on most watches.

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Garmin devices have a ton of activity and watch settings to go through and tweak, even when youre not actually exercising. From building new workouts to choosing new watch faces, checking your Body Battery and Readiness scores to looking at live progress of your stock market options, there are all sorts of things you can do on the best Garmin watches .

Sometimes, when youre deep in your settings, you need to push the back button about half a dozen times to return back to your watch face through the labyrinth of menus one by one, which can be irritating. Technology should be easy, seamless, with a single gesture allowing you to return to the home screen with minimal fuss.

Ive tested tons of Garmin watches over the years, from the cheapest
Vivoactive to the top-flight Garmin Fenix 8 , and in the middle of testing
GPS accuracy and finding scuba divers to check the dive computer features,
and all the rest of it, you occasionally just forget some features are there at all. I wrote about this a couple of days ago with the Gear Tracking
feature in Garmin Connect , and a recent conversation reminded me about yet another less well-known Garmin watch trick. (Image credit: Garmin)

When chatting to TechRadars Homes Editor (and former Fitness Editor) Cat
Ellis about her new Garmin, she bemoaned the fact that the Lily 2 Active couldnt perform the classic Garmin touchscreen gesture, which involves a tapping the screen of the watch with your palm, covering the watch face to return it to the home screen. Its a neat hidden feature on most Garmin watches, not shouted about at all (again, just like Gear Tracking) but a useful timesaver. Garmin calls it the palm gesture.

The gesture doesnt work if youre tracking an activity, but it does have an alternative use. When I used the gesture on my everyday-wear Garmin Venu 4 while tracking a run, it doesnt return to the home screen instead, it acts
as a touchscreen lock, which prevents any sweat, water or rubbing clothing shifting the watch away from the view you need at that point in your workout. This works on any watch with a touchscreen lock function: the Lily 2 Active doesnt have one, which is why the gesture doesnt work.

For watches that do, the palm gesture is simple, clean, effective and easily forgotten about although fortunately, Im here to remind you about it. How to do the palm gesture in Garmin Connect Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Future) Image 2 of 2 (Image credit: Future) On a touchscreen Garmin watch, navigate around a few of its many menus and settings in the usual way To return to the home screen, briefly cover the entirety of the watchface with your palm The watch will revert to the home screen

Garmin says : If you want to return to the watch face from any screen
(except for while recording an activity), you can press your palm to the entire watch face. This will also turn down the backlight. You can turn on
the back light or wake the display by tapping it.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/got-a-new-garmin-watch-one-hidden-ges ture-control-can-return-you-to-home-and-even-lock-your-touchscreen


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