Save a copy of your new gmapprom.img in the /Garmin/New folder as the next backup. This is your new map! Copy it back to your Garmin, re-start it, and take it for a test drive. For the Garmin, you must rename that file to gmapprom.img. After unzipping it, you'll have a file called gmapsupp.img. 7-zip works, most default 'archivers' work for decompressing zip files. Move that file to /Garmin/New and extract it there. And fast! The file you want for the Garmin Nuvi is named osm_generic_gmapsupp.zip. My old map is North America, nearly 3GB in size! Yikes! So I selected only my own state for the new map, because that’s really all I need and it’s just a few hundred MB in size. If you customize yours, you’ll need to enter your e-mail address and they’ll notify you when it’s compiled and ready to download.

Select and download the new maps from It’s easy, just follow the prompts on the screen to select your map by continent, country, state, province, or customize your own. If I needed to restore it, I’d give it back it’s original name. I renamed this backup file gmapprom-old.img. This is a safety thing! ALWAYS BACK UP the old map in case something goes wrong! Now you can DELETE gmapprom.img from the Garmin. You can do this in the terminal or just open your file manager as root (“sudo thunar” in a terminal window) and move the file from your Garmin to the “Map” subfolder.

I then copied the map file, named gmapprom.img, to /home/robin/GarminNuvi/Map. I connected my Garmin Nuvi to my computer via a USB port and it was automagically mounted, thanks to Thunar’s awesomeness (Thunar is the Xfce file manager in Linux). I navigated to my /home directory and created a new folder named “GarminNuvi.” It has a subfolder called Maps. But according to this wonderful web page, it also works for some other brands. I’m just going to write about the Garmin GPS because that’s what I have and all I really know. They also show considerably more detail, judging by my Nuvi’s performance today. Maps are updated much more often than the official Garmin maps. The technique I’ll show you here uses OpenStreetMap, a free and open-source collaborative work. Not for directions, but just as a “rolling map” to tell me where I am and streets are coming up as I travel.

I do the FedEx Ground delivery driver thing, and I have an old hand-me-down Garmin Nuvi that I use on my route. So if this li’l technophobic sidekick can manage it, it’s likely that any of my readers can. I did it, and I’m still as technophobic as I ever was.

And no, you don’t have to pay for updated maps either, even if your GPS is older or unregistered with the company. No you don’t have to have either Windows or Mac in order to update your Garmin Nuvi GPS (or Magellan, TomTom, and a few others).

Garmin nuvi updates free