Gaia GPS to Garmin Instinct

I love using my Garmin Instinct GPS watch as my trail navigator on my motorcycle. I know that’s not what it’s for but it makes a very capable trail navigator with a simple, clean display and no extraneous information or features whatsoever. Using the Garmin handlebar mount I have it mounted discretely to my turn signal stalk on my Yamaha XT250. The Garmin Instinct shows me the route I’m trying to follow, whether I’m on it or off-course, and if I’m off-course it tells me by how much and gives me an arrow pointing the direction I ought to head.

There are two ways I use it off-road. Sometimes I just ride and have it navigate me back to where I started along the path I followed out. Sometimes I plan a course at home and use the Garmin Instinct to help me follow the route I plotted without having to get my phone out.

That raises the question of how to get a route that I planned at home transferred into the Garmin Instinct so I can follow it later out in the desert. It turns out that is much easier than a lot of people I’ve seen talking about it online seem to say. A lot easier.

This is a description of the workflow I use to design a route on my iPhone and transfer it to the Garmin Instinct using nothing but my phone and the watch. No cables, no computer, nothing. There are a lot of different ways to do similar things and I actually also use a different way, too, but this is just one clean workflow to help you out or to inspire you to get your own better workflow going.

I’m using Gaia GPS to create and save my route, and I am using the Garmin Connect app to get the route from my phone into the watch. This is where I think some other people online had trouble. I am not using the Garmin Explore app, I am using the Garmin Connect app and it works great. If you’re using a Garmin Instinct watch chances are you’re going to want to be using the Garmin Connect app. So if you want to follow along, install the Gaia GPS app, the Garmin Connect app, and make sure your Garmin Instinct is on and close to your phone.

I start with creating a route in the Gaia GPS app on my phone. This isn’t a tutorial about that. Here I’m showing you a route I’ve already made in Gaia GPS. It’s that strangely angular blue route with the giant black arrow pointing at it.

I tapped on the route. The route name pops up. This route is called Wild Cow Ravine. Now below I tap on the little i icon next to the route name.

After tapping on the i icon you can see below I’m now showing the details for this route. Below I tap the three dots at the upper right of this Route screen.

Below I tap the Export menu item to export this route.

I choose to export this below as a GPX file.

Here is where the magic happens. In the step above I exported a GPX file. But where does it get exported to? Look where I tapped below. Below you can see that I tapped the three dots in the More icon at the end of the app list.

Tapping that More button gives me the option to choose Copy to Connect below. By choosing that I’m sending the GPX file to the Garmin Connect app.

The Garmin Connect app then launches below automatically, first asking me to define what type of route this is. I’m using it for motorcycle riding off-road so I just choose Other below since no other category fits.

Now you can see my weirdly angular course below in Garmin Connect looking just like it did in the Gaia GPS app. I swipe up from the bottom as shown below to start giving the course its proper name.

It comes in with a stupid name as shown below. Maybe using a KML file would prevent that but it’s easy to rename it to what you want. This is important because this is how it will show up on the watch.

I named the route Wild Cow Ravine below just like I had it named in the Gaia GPS app.

After you name the route the way you want it to show up on the Garmin Instinct, tap the three dots as shown below in Garmin Connect.

That gives you the option to Send to Device as you see below. Choose that.

Select your Garmin Instinct from the list as shown below.

You’ll get a screen like this as shown below. Not much to do here. You can exit out of this with the back arrow in the upper left corner. It’s under my (pitiful) signal bars.

On the main Garmin Connect screen you can see that my Instinct is connected and synced as shown below where I’m pointing with the two yellow arrows.

Now take a look at the watch below. Press the GPS button once.

Choose Navigate below.

In the screen below choose Courses.

And now below you can confirm that the Wild Cow Ravine route has been transferred from Gaia GPS to the Garmin Instinct.

You have the option to Do Course or check the Map as shown by the two menu items below. The map isn’t that useful but it does give you a visual that the basic shape of your course is there in the watch. Out on the trail I choose Do Course to activate the very helpful navigation mode. Here I just chose Map below to show the basic course shape.

Below I’m getting the Map menu item selected.

And there is the map below showing the overview of the course so that you can get a visual confirmation that the route transferred over.

Finally below you can see side-by-side the original route in Gaia GPS and the course as it transferred into the Garmin Instinct.

There are a lot of ways to do similar things. This workflow shows very specifically one process that I noticed a lot of people were having trouble with. You can plot routes using other tools including Garmin Explore, but I use Gaia GPS a lot on my phone so it’s nice to be able to get my route sent right over to the Garmin Instinct in less than two minutes with no cables and no computer.