Your rides are yours

Since September 2025, European law says something simple about the data your bike computer or watch records: it is yours. The company that makes the device has to give it to you, free of charge, in a format other software can read, and it has to hand it to any app you choose. This page says what that means for Volta, and how we read your Garmin while Garmin catches up.

What the law says

The EU Data Act (Regulation 2023/2854) applies to connected products — a Garmin Edge or a Garmin watch is one — and to the cloud services they sync to. It gives you three things:

• Access. You can ask for the data your device generated, and get it without delay, free, and in a machine-readable form — continuously, where that is technically possible.
• Sharing. You can have that data sent to a third party you choose. An app like Volta, for instance.
• Protection. No terms of service can take those rights away from you, and the maker cannot make them unreasonably hard to use.

How Volta reads your Garmin

Garmin has closed its partner programme to new applications and is not answering requests. So there is, today, no official door for an app like Volta. What we do instead is let you use your own front door:

• You sign in on Garmin's own sign-in page, inside Volta, with Garmin's own two-step verification. Volta never sees your password.
• Your Garmin sign-in stays on your phone. Volta's servers never talk to Garmin, and never hold anything that could log in as you.
• Volta reads your rides the way Garmin's own website reads them for you, from your own account, at the pace you would browsing it yourself. Nothing is disguised, nothing is broken into, nothing is worked around.
• You read and tick a plain-language notice before any of this happens, and you can read it again in settings at any time. Disconnect removes the sign-in from your phone.

The honest catch

Garmin does not officially support apps reading your rides this way. If Garmin changes its site, the connection may stop working. We say so before you connect, in the same words, and we would much rather use a proper channel. The day Garmin offers one, we will move you to it.

What we have asked Garmin

We have written to Garmin's European office asking, under the Data Act, for a channel through which riders' data can be shared with Volta — any channel, on the terms the law sets. If we hear nothing, the law gives us and you a route to the Dutch regulator, the Authority for Consumers and Markets, and we will use it.

You can ask too

The right of access is yours, not ours, and a request in your own name cannot be queued behind partner applications. In Volta, once your Garmin is connected, one tap opens a pre-written request from you to Garmin. Send it or don't; it changes nothing about how Volta works for you. But the more riders ask, the harder the question is to ignore.

Read the full position

voltacoach.app B.V. (KvK 42098549) has set out its full legal position, with sources, in a position paper we are happy to share with anyone who asks: [email protected]. It is a position, not legal advice, and we say where it is untested.