FWIW, I have Garmin express 7.25.0.0 running on an M1 mac, and it connects to both my F965 and Edge 1050 fine.
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You have them on the Home screen? Weird then… I have an appointment at an Apple Store (over 2 hours away) to test the app on other hardware. Now not sure if the drive will prove anything. I tried the M2 just a bit ago thinking it might be interesting to see if it works. Might be with it to dig out the M1 and see if it works.
It’s going to make living with a Garmin Edge computer a pain in the butt…
Sounds typical for Garmin. I had two 510s and have been through hell with them over the years. The first was glacially slow whenever connected to my Mac. I crashed it and got a “new” refurb 510 from Garmin. That one was fast and worked ok, but Garmin would break something with almost every software update. I primary bought a 510 for bluetooth and it just stopped connecting to my phone over bluetooth - cable only now. (Do I even have a Mac that will run Garmin Express for it?)
I have a 530 now and I never use Express. It connects to my iPhone. I’ve never even had a reason to connect it to Garmin Express. Are there things you can only do with an Edge on Express?
This was my thinking too. Although I have used Garmin devices for years and also currrently have several of them, I am very anti-Garmin when it comes to installing any of their software to my macbook. I use the Garmin Connect app on my iPhone to sync the workouts, update the software etc.
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Garmin Express is working on my MBP M1, but is the last app remaining that isn’t Apple Silicone native
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With rosetta running, I installed Garmin Express on my M3 Mac with no issues. It recognized my 1050, Varia, and Fenix. It updated the maps just fine (although it takes a while).
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Yeah, direct connect to the internet at home and using a cable makes the map updates take a lot less time. Not sure if they can be done through Bluetooth, but the maps are so ‘beefy’/dense, that pushing that much data around would be a long process.
At the Apple Store now, and the managers M2 Air worked fine with Express! No issues, it just worked. So disappointed, and wondering what kind of hell I’ve tripped into, and how the different levels of the M chips are not similar enough to make programs/apps able to run on them without being tweaked for the actual version of the processor. Well, AND the device the M chip is in!! 
That it ran on an M2 MacBook Air, and won’t run on an M2 mac mini, is disturbing.
That it won’t run on an M4 Max system is ridiculous.
So I’m in ‘vendor hell’, with both of them pointing fingers furiously at each other. sigh
And there is something going on at a level that is kind of freaking me out. It should ‘just work’. THe computers should ‘just work’. The app should ‘just work’. That the Apple systems aren’t ‘agnostic’ is like saying gravity is ‘optional’.
Have you tried:
- Completely uninstalling Garmin Express - use something like AppCleaner or similar to get all the files that Garmin Express installs
- Empty your trash
- Reboot your Mac
- Reinstall Garmin Express
- If you have one, try a different Garmin device (e.g., Varia radar) and see if that works
- Try your Edge
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Well…
Interesting…
It didn’t work, and the Apple Genius suggested that the only thing he could suggest was to erase and reload it there so they can watch. And I did… It was quicker, but still took a while.
So the system is rebooting several times and then comes up to the desktop. I download Express, install it and the Genius suggested some changes in Privacy and Security. (It was an old Garmin article) So the only thing I was able to change is for devices attached to the system, and I changed it to ask always.
I start the install, and just blindly went through the install process, and then there was a second install that was Express. I think that Rosetta was installed, and that never installed before, to my knowledge. Interesting… I plugged in the 1040 and got the standard add to Express message. I gasped and the Genius pointed! It worked!! I disconnected everything and rebooted, all the time thinking I’m dreaming. It cam back up, I logged in, and I saw a little rectangular box popup in the upper right that said that the 1040 had synced through Garmin Express, I had never seen that box before. Wow…
So I rebooted and reconnected, got that box, got Express opened, saw the 1040 in Express home. Wow, IT WORKS!!!
So my idea on what happened is that the original installs was not catching the need for Rosetta, and therefore not installing it. (The genius said that Rosetta is not installed OOB (OutOfBox) and needs to be installed, usually prompted by the program/app being installed. So somehow the install of Rosetta was prompted and it installed. (I felt so much like a user, blindly clicking a box to install something and not watching what was being installed) And Rosetta (2) did what Rosetta does. I doubt that the change in Privacy did much, if anything, but we were both celebrating the Express working. Wow!!!
So, how to trigger Rosetta to install, as I think that was what was installed when I was in ‘user mode’. Hmm… (Based on the Apple Genius person who said that Rosetta (2) is not installed by default (only the installer stub is there), will have to check that, but something was installing, and I was just feeling tired and silly staying there so long, but it worked Rosetta 2 info: It is NOT installed OOB, so it must be ‘triggered’ to install, and apparently something in Express, or some latency somewhere does not trigger it. I’m going to force Rosetta on the M2 mini and see if it will work tomorrow. It’ll be interesting, and also why Rosetta doesn’t trigger each time too)
Or go to the local Apple Store, and ‘erase’ your mac system, reinstall the OS, and Express and watch for the Rosetta (2) install.
A week, or more of fidgeting, and it finally worked, after spending over 2 hours at an Apple Store.
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Thanks, I’m honored. Part of it is a tenacity to figure out what was happening, and part of it was having data to shove in Garmin’s face that Express wasn’t working. I mean after reading so many stories about people not able to get it to run properly. Plus when I ran my computer company, I hated the finger pointing between different vendors. It’s too easy for some people to point at ‘the other guy’ and blame them for a problem that could easily be theirs (and they may know it). The wife was with me, so she got in some shopping while I was there. Winner winner, chicken dinner?
But forcing Rosetta on the mini will prove the hypothesis for sure…
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(After this last reinstall, the battery life seems better too)
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This really points to Garmin needing to get off the pot and produce an Apple Silicon native Garmin Express build. Apple Silicon based Macs were released ~5 years ago now (or at least my MBP M1 is 2020 vintage), the last Intel based mac was an October, 2021 release according to Wikipedia, so IMHO the days of Rosetta are definitely numbered.
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BAD NEWS!!!
Installing Rosetta did NOT fix the issue on my M2 mac mini!! 
Given my small number of M powered systems, I only have an M1 left, so off to the junk box to get it powered up, while I will try to erase and reinstall macOS and see of that mysterious install happens again. (It was an actual install, not the Rosetta silent install. I could kick myself for not paying more attention to that install, but 2 hours at an Apple Store is its own hell)
And it didn’t work on the M1 or M2 mini I have. One had Rosetta already, and one needed it installed. Erasing the M2 to see if a reinstall can get that mystery install to fire again.
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I posted this so people that know what they are doing, have the problem, and want to see if this fixes it on their system can give it a go. Even though it didn’t work on my M2 mini, I DID get Express to work on this M4.
This is what was installed yesterday at the Apple Store. Interesting that ‘RosettaUpdateAuto’ was installed, that was the ‘mystery install’ that happened.
Something triggered that to install, and I downloaded that package, to see if it makes any difference. 
It didn’t, or the updater programs aren’t the same for some reason.
And you can download the RosettaUpdateAuto package by following these instructions:
And you find the version of your macOS by going to About This Mac, then More Info…, then System Report (scroll down), and click on Software. At the top it will show the major version, and the release version. 18.55 is release 24F74. Search for that, and above that you will see a line ‘ULR<key.>’. Below that, copy the URL that begins with HTTPS, and ends in “pkg”, but only between those two parts, and paste that into your browser and the file will download. Double click it and it will start the installer. After it’s done, reboot and try it again.
Now the only thing that I changed on the notebook was a setting in Privacy and Security. There is a section after the Security section titled “Accessories”; I set it to ‘Always ask’. It’ll popup and disappear on occasion, but when it pops up, click ‘Allow’. That is the only thing that I changed after the erase/reinstall of macOS. (And it still works on this notebook, amazingly enough)
There also seems to be enough blame to go around for this. If it is a Rosetta issue, why doesn’t Rosetta fire the install more consistently, and why doesn’t the command line install apparently work properly. On the other side, why doesn’t Garmin have an Apple Silicone version of Express, or at least handle whatever is missing better.
The error message ‘This device isn’t compatible with Express’ seems to be the answer when the programmers don’t want to figure out what the problem was. It could also be the default answer when the connection dance doesn’t complete, ignoring potentially a lot of issues and giving a non-answer. (I remember seeing ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ in an macOS error log, and a third level engineer laughed: ‘That’s the message when we either can’t identify the problem, or don’t want or don’t have to know what it was’. Basically ‘Something bad just happened and we don’t know/care’. Nice, cute, but not at all usable. Programmers…
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Your should mark this post as the solution so anyone reading the first post will see the automatic link to this post. (I think you do it from the three dots dropdown).
ETA: I said that before finishing reading the thread. I guess there’s something else/additional going on. Hopefully you get it sorted. You mentioned the permission setting. I would try that again.
One of my gripes with Apple is that they want to hide all errors so when something goes wrong you have bupkis to go on.
And that macOS is built on a version of Unix, and there is still a lot of that lurking under the surface. Probably less now, but in the early days, I got involved in trying to solve an issue with a PPPOE connection through a dsl modem, and I could get the commands in, but they mostly didn’t function. No joy… Called Apple, and got to third level. The guy claimed to be a later developer for macOS, and said that sure there was a lot of Mach and Unix in there, but so much of it had been disconnected, ruled by an applet in System Settings. I found a shim that setup the connection and got immense joy and happiness. But the error messages were verging on hysterical. ‘Not the droids you’re looking for’? But…
Being a programmer in a past life, I often had to branch a program with a decision tree, some branches I cared about and some I didn’t, so the ones I didn’t care about went to the everything else bucket. In testing I’d have to show variables so I knew what bombed to know if I cared, and adding a branch to handle it, or not. Deployment meant pulling out the show variable list and if the user was lucky, adding a message. If subsequent programmers were lucky, I had it write a log file, or the person requesting it required a log file. Most didn’t.
This sounds like par for the course with Garmin sofware releases.
You’d think Garmin would wake up. Apple is shipping 15% of the new PC market now and I’d bet that people that will pay the Apple premium are also more likely to pay the Garmin premium.
Maybe they just want the desktop app to die off eventually?
I’m sure they do, but as GP pointed out, Express is still needed for some updates.
Adobe was notoriously slow on updating their macOS product line. Sometimes their Windows versions would be quite a bit updated, and mac users would be wondering when they would get the update(s). I knew many people who just dropped Adobe completely rather than be 'carrot and stick’ed to switch to Windows as that seemed their unwritten excuse for the delays.
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Except there are a bunch of Garmin products (e.g., Varia 515) that don’t work with the Garmin connect mobile app to update - it’s either desktop or an Edge. At least for me, I’m not going to update my Varia right before a ride when I turn on my Edge at the start of the ride. So not being able to update it via desktop app would be a major step back.