Topographic Analog
· v1.0.0
About
Contour lines and two classic hands. If you like it, please consider buying me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/irmantas
The background is a topographic map — the kind of hand-drawn contour pattern you’d find on a trail map — sitting under a simple analog dial. No second hand, no clutter. Just the hour, the minute, and the terrain.
What’s on the face
Weekday and date
Hour and minute hands, with optional hour markers
Battery percentage
Step count
That’s it. Four things, laid out with plenty of breathing room.
The hour hand is shorter and thicker than the minute hand, so the two stay easy to tell apart even in a single colour. It also drifts gradually between the hour marks rather than jumping, the way a mechanical movement does.
Make it yours
Colour the hour and the minute hand independently — pick from white, gray, green, dark green, yellow, orange, light blue, blue, red, purple, pink and teal. Match them for a clean single-colour look, or split them so the hour reads as an accent against the minute.
Other options:
Topographic pattern — on for the contour map, off for a plain dark background
Hour markers — twelve ticks around the dial, longer at 12, 3, 6 and 9
Outline ring — a thin rim around the edge of the screen
Always-on display — see below
Every setting is adjustable two ways: from the Garmin Connect phone app, or directly on the watch. Hold the watch face, choose Settings, and you’re in. No phone required.
Built for your screen
The contour pattern isn’t stretched or scaled to fit — a separate version is generated for every screen size so the lines stay exactly one pixel crisp on all of them. The dial is then sized to the space actually left between the date and the info row, so the hands never crowd either one, on a 218px Forerunner or a 454px fēnix.
Colours were also tuned per screen type — an MIP display (Forerunner 255, fēnix 7) renders far fewer shades than an AMOLED, so each palette entry was checked to make sure it still looks like the colour you picked.
Always-on mode
On AMOLED watches with always-on enabled, the dimmed screen shows the hands as thin outlines and hides everything else. This keeps lit pixels well inside Garmin’s always-on budget and follows the guidelines for thin strokes, which is gentler on the display over time.
The time is still readable at a glance in this mode — that’s the whole point of it.
Compatibility
Forerunner 165, 170, 255, 265, 570, 570 47mm, 70, 965, 970 fēnix 7, 7S, 7X, 7 Pro, 7S Pro, 7X Pro, 8 43mm, 8 47mm Venu 3, Venu 3S, Venu X1 vívoactive 5, vívoactive 6
Requires Connect IQ 4.0 or later.