Introduction
(Lists: August 13, 2024)
With the Listago companion app for Android smartphones and tablets, users can create and edit an unlimited number of lists.
Before going shopping or whenever a list is needed, it can easily be transferred to the Garmin watch, displayed there, and individual items can be marked as completed one by one.
Since the available storage space on the watch is rather limited, depending on the device, lists can also be deleted directly from the watch.
The accompanying Listago companion app is available exclusively for Android smartphones and tablets through the Google Play Store.
The Garmin "Lists" App
The Garmin app was developed for all Garmin watches featuring either a touchscreen or at least three buttons and a minimum API level of 3.1.0. It is written in Garmin's Monkey C programming language.
I developed all user interface components myself, including scrollable pages that can be controlled either by gestures or with the watch's buttons, multi-line text controls, buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, and much more.
I also had to take the different display shapes into account. Separate scrollbars are used for rectangular and round displays.
In addition, the size of icons and text had to be adapted to the various display resolutions.
The Garmin app is available in five different themes. It is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified).
All icons and graphics used in the app were created by me.
All translations except German and English were created with the help of artificial intelligence (ChatGPT + Mistral).
The Android App "Listago"
Initially, I developed the Android app as a native Android application in Java.
However, after I started working professionally with the Ionic Framework, I later migrated this app as well.
Communication between the Android app and the Garmin watch is handled by a custom Capacitor plugin written by me in Java, which uses Garmin's Mobile SDK for Android.
The data is transferred via Bluetooth using JSON objects.
The lists are stored in an SQLite database on the smartphone.
In an earlier version, the lists were stored as JSON files. However, this approach proved to be too cumbersome, so I migrated the application to SQLite.
Additional Capacitor Plugins
Among others, I used the following additional Capacitor plugins:
To cover at least a small part of the time I have invested in developing this private project, I decided to display a small Google AdMob banner ad within the app.
For a long time, I used the Capacitor plugin @capacitor-community/admob. However, because it caused problems on some devices with Android's mandatory Edge-to-Edge mode introduced in Android 16, I eventually developed my own plugin.
In Listago, the successor to my Lists app, advertisements can be disabled at any time if users find them distracting or simply do not wish to support me.
Despite this, the app is and always will be free of charge.
Privacy
Neither the Android app nor the Garmin app collects or processes personal data. The lists created by the user are stored exclusively on the Android smartphone or tablet and on the Garmin watch, and are transferred via Bluetooth only with the user's explicit consent when required.
However, by displaying the AdMob banner in the Android app, Google may collect personal data. Google alone is responsible for the collection and further processing of this data, and the AdMob Privacy Policy applies. Consent to data collection can be granted or withdrawn at any time within the app.
The app's privacy policy (last updated: July 2025) can be found here.