This one feature helped me turn my Meta AI glasses into a Garmin for video workouts
Last fall, Meta announced a partnership with Garmin, allowing Oakley Meta and Ray-Ban Meta users to connect their glasses to smartwatches. This means that detailed Garmin fitness stats taken from your smartwatch will be automatically overlaid on any videos recorded on your glasses during your workout.
As someone who likes to go to Spartan races, I was attracted to the idea of seeing my fitness data against the obstacles I passed in each race. The problem was that my Garmin watch was very old and did not support the Meta AI sync feature. Garmin watches are expensive, so I’ve never jumped the gun to get a new one, but the new relationship between Meta and Strava turned out to be the answer I’ve been looking for.
At first, I thought that Meta AI’s partnership with Strava would automatically tag any videos taken at the same time as a workout posted to Strava. I went to the gym for my usual workout of the day and tracked everything, I also recorded a couple of 400 meter runs that I was tasked with doing, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the Strava stats into my videos.
Turns out, you need to start tracking workouts with the Strava app, which is fine if you’re using a Wear OS watch like the OnePlus Watch 3 43mm I’m using. You can also use the Strava phone app, but you will lose the heart rate data.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to connect Strava workouts to videos captured with Meta AI goggles if you didn’t record the workout using the Strava app. That means you can’t add stats to old videos, but at least you can do this going forward.
To get started, you’ll want to open the Meta AI app, tap the Devices tab at the bottom, and then tap the settings wheel next to your glasses. From the list, select App Connections, then select Strava from the list. Sign in with your Strava account and accept the necessary permissions to track your stats.
Now, when you’re ready for a workout, start a workout from the Strava app on your phone or smartwatch. While Strava tracks your workouts, record videos or with your Meta AI glasses. Photos don’t seem to offer an option to overlay stats, only videos.
When your workout is over, open the Meta AI app on your phone, tap the Devices tab at the bottom, and select Gallery. Open one of the videos you took during your workout, then tap the stats button in the top left corner. Enable the statistics slider, and choose up to five available statistics to overlay on your video.
By default, the statistics panel displays real-time data as you move through the video, but you can change it to a snapshot by selecting the Statistics Type in this section and changing it to a snapshot. Each of these stats types offers different stats to display, making it fun to use both types in different videos. Using a smartwatch to record your Strava workouts will give you a lot of statistical benefits as it can record heart rate and other data points.
When you’re happy with your stats, tap the Save button in the top right to save the new video to your phone’s gallery. Now you can share video with overlay statistics using the Meta AI app or your favorite gallery app on your phone, like Google Photos.
Smart and stylish is the name of the game for the OnePlus Watch 3 43mm, a watch that’s just the right size, 3-day battery life, packs in the power of Google’s WearOS platform, and looks great to wear every time.
