How to Get Blood Sugar Readings on Your Smartwatch Using Gluroo

Having blood glucose (BGL) levels on hand at all times, whether the numbers are your own or from someone you love, is an important tool for improving your blood sugar levels. Although you can always pull out your phone and check your Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) readings in Gluroo or in your first-party CGM app (Dexcom G6, etc.), it’s nice to be able to simply glance down at your watch and not interrupt whatever else you’re doing.

In this article, we’re going to discuss how you can use Gluroo to see your blood sugar readings on your smartwatch. The watches we cover here are:

• Apple watches
• Google Pixel watches
• Samsung watches
• Garmin watches (and other Garmin devices)

Gluroo Libre/Dexcom CGM values on Apple Watches

Gluroo has the most updated data complication available for your CGM and your Apple Watch. It works great with Dexcom and with Libre CGMs. Our simple instructions for CGM blood sugar readings on your Apple Watch are available here and should be your first choice if you’re interested in seeing your estimated blood sugar on watchOS.

Calendar Integration

The first and easiest way to see blood glucose information on nearly every smartwatch is to use Gluroo’s built in calendar integration. Navigate to Menu -> Settings > watch/calendar/car tab and enable the calendar sync by pressing “Create calendar named Gluroo”. It should look something like this:

You’ll then have a new Google calendar account on your phone. That account will get updated every few minutes with a new event that is your most recent blood glucose levels. With any smartwatch that can natively read calendar events, you’ll now have up to date BGL values with a few quick taps. Here’s what it looks like on my Garmin Instinct 2S:

For more in-depth discussion of the calendar integration including how to set it up on iOS vs. Android, check out our guide: Gluroo Calendar Integration.

Gluroo as a Nightscout-Compatible Backend

Many of the following methods rely on using Gluroo as a Nightscout backend, so let’s cover what exactly that means.

Gluroo can imitate a Nightscout service without you actually having to run your own Nightscout server. This is useful because it means that you no longer need to host a Nightscout server on your own hardware, or pay a fee to have one hosted elsewhere – Gluroo does it all for free.

Just got to Menu -> Devices -> OTHER tab to find your Nightscout URL and API secret.

This functionality unlocks the ability to use a TON of other helpful diabetes tools – things like xDrip, Nightwatch, and more. Some smartwatch apps that show blood glucose levels, for example Garmin’s user-developed apps, allow you to use a Nightscout URL and API secret as a data source. In this way, you can use Gluroo to imitate a Nightscout service and get CGM data to your smartwatch!

Smartwatch Integrations

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s see about some common smartwatch integrations.

Apple Watch

(Note that this approach is deprecated though it still works. Here is the preferred approach for getting glucose readings on your Apple Watch.)

Apple watch users can download Nightguard. This app runs on the watch itself and pulls data from a Nightscout backend. Again, as in the picture above, you can simply copy and paste the Nightscout URL and API secret into the Nightguard settings – no need to set up an actual Nightscout instance.

Step-by-step Instructions (see images below):

1. Make sure you are seeing readings in Gluroo (in the top right, the “142 1m” means my latest BGL reading was 1 minute ago and it was 142 mg/dL). Then, go to Menu > Devices > Other, and under “Gluroo Global Connect”, press “Copy”. This will open up a new pop-up titled “NS-Compatible URLs”.
2. Press “Copy” next to Nightguard (iOS). THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! It will copy a URL that is specifically formatted for Nightguard! Any other link will not work.
3. Open the Nightguard app.
4. Navigate to the “More” tab.
5. Tap “Preferences”
6. Paste the link from your clipboard into the “URL” spot. Now when you go back to the Main tab, you should see your blood glucose levels in Nightguard!

After this, you can switch to your Apple Watch and edit your home screen to add the new widget. If you want to follow a video for how to do that, see this link: How To Get Libre 2 & 3 Levels on Apple Watch

BUT REMEMBER: The easiest and best Gluroo integration to see Libre 2 & 3 estimated blood sugar readings on your Apple Watch is here.

Google Pixel Watches

UPDATE: Gluroo now has a Wear OS app – check it out here: Gluroo for Wear OS: Blood Glucose Levels on Your Smart Watch.

For watches with the Wear OS operating system, there’s a guide on installing xDrip+ that you can find here. Once you get xDrip+ up and running on your watch, you can configure it to pull data directly from Gluroo via the Nightscout URL (like in the screenshot above). This link from the Nightscout Github project will show you what that looks like in the app (image below). Note that you will need to format the Nightscout URL and API secret in the proper syntax that is highlighted in the previous link.

Samsung Watches

UPDATE: Gluroo now has a Wear OS app – check it out here: Gluroo for Wear OS: Blood Glucose Levels on Your Smart Watch.

One option for Samsung watches is to use this app: G-Watch App. Download it and configure it to use a Nightscout instance as your data source. Then, copy and paste the info from Gluroo into the app where it asks for a Nightscout URL and API Secret (or password/key).

Garmin Watches (and other Garmin devices)

Most Garmin devices have the ability to download apps from the Connect IQ store. From there, you can search for apps that you can download to your specific device. In my case, I use a Garmin Instinct 2 Solar. I then searched for “Nightscout” and found a number of apps that allow Nightscout as a data source.

Here is my best recommendation for seeing blood glucose levels on your Garmin smartwatch:

1. Download Gluroo and add your CGM credentials (Menu > Devices > CGM tab). For Libre users, see this article: How to Use the Freestyle Libre 2 or 3 with Gluroo. Once your CGM readings are being properly uploaded to Gluroo (in the top right of the app), move on to the next step.
2. Download the Garmin Connect IQ app on your phone.
3. In the Connect IQ app, search for and install the “CGM Connect Watchface digital“. NOTE: we are not affiliated with this watch face or developer. This is just what I use on my own Garmin device, and it works great! If you have any questions about how to use it, please see their documentation.
4. In the “Settings” for that watch face, set your “Device” (the data source) to “Nightscout Server”.
5. For “Email/Username/URL”, go back to Gluroo and grab your Nightscout URL. This is found in Menu > Devices, OTHER tab, under “Gluroo Global Connect”. Copy the Nightscout URL and paste it back into the “Email/Username/URL” field (in the Connect IQ app).
6. Do the same thing for the “Password/Secret” field. Copy the “API Secret Token” from Gluroo and paste it into that field.
7. Tap “Save” and wait a few minutes. Make sure that your watch has synced with the Garmin Connect IQ app, so that this new watch face is now on your watch.
8. On your watch, select the watch face. This process varies from model to model. On my Instinct 2, I press hold down the left middle button, select “Watch Face”, and then scroll up or down to find the new one we just added.
9. At this point you may see an error code on the watch face, if for example the data hasn’t synced yet. See their documentation for error codes to double check. You may just need to wait a little longer.

That should be it! Now your CGM readings are flowing from your CGM cloud service (e.g. Dexcom Share or LibreLinkUp) to Gluroo, from Gluroo to the Garmin Connect IQ app, and from that app to your watch.

Fitbit

The best way to see your blood glucose levels on a Fitbit watch is to use Glance.

1. Install Glance
2. Select “custom” as your data source
3. Format your API endpoint from Gluroo. In Gluroo, navigate to Menu -> Devices -> OTHER. Under Gluroo Global Connect, you will see a Nightscout URL and API secret. You will need to copy both of these into a note on your phone, and put them in the following format: <nightscout URL>pebble?token=<API secret>&count=47
4. In the end, what you are pasting into Glance should look something like this: https://127d.ns.gluroo.com/pebble?token=127dgqad3-4479-329q-9183-947f919283701c13&count=47, where the bolded parts are specific to you.
5. From there, you are good to go! You should start seeing readings flow on to your watch!

See the setup guide on Glance’s website for more information and contact us at help@gluroo.com if it doesn’t seem to be working for you.

Final Thoughts

Having access to your blood glucose levels at all times is a great way to stay on top of your diabetes. Being able to check your BGL by simply looking at your watch is super convenient.

Gluroo provides a useful service that can let you do this with many smart watches. You can learn more about Gluroo here on our website or download it today for free!