Garmin Explore™
July 05, 2025
More About Garmin Explore™
• Garmin Explore needs SMS permission to allow you to receive and send SMS text messages from your Garmin devices. We also need call log permission to display incoming calls on your devices.
• Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.
OFF-GRID NAVIGATION
When paired with your compatible Garmin device2, the Garmin Explore app lets you use your mobile device for outdoor navigation, trip planning, mapping, and more — with or without Wi-Fi® connectivity or cellular service.
SEARCH TOOL
Easily locate geographic points — such as trailheads or mountain summits — associated with your adventure.
STREAMING MAPS
For pre-trip planning, you can use the Garmin Explore app to stream maps when you’re within cellular or Wi-Fi range — saving valuable time as well as storage space on your mobile device. Download maps for offline use when venturing outside cellular range.
EASY TRIP PLANNING
Plan your next trip by downloading maps and creating courses. Specify your start and finish points, and automatically create a course you can sync with your compatible Garmin device2.
ACTIVITY LIBRARY
Under the Saved tab, review and edit your organized data, including your saved waypoints, tracks, courses, and activities. See map thumbnails to easily recognize your trips.
SAVED COLLECTIONS
The collections list allows you to quickly find all data related to any trip — making it easy to sort and locate the course or location you’re looking for.
CLOUD STORAGE
The waypoints, courses, and activities you’ve created will automatically sync to your Garmin Explore web account when you’re within cellular or Wi-Fi range, preserving your activity data with cloud storage. A Garmin account is required for storing your data in the cloud.
LIVETRACK™
With the use of the LiveTrack™ feature, loved ones can follow your location in real time3 and see data such as distance, time and elevation.
What You Get with Garmin Explore
• Unlimited map downloads; access topographic maps, USGS quad sheets, and more
• Aerial imagery
• Waypoints, tracking and route navigation
• High-detail GPS trip logging and location sharing
• Unlimited cloud storage of routes, waypoints, tracks, and activities
• Online trip planning
1 See compatible devices at Garmin.com/BLE
2 See a full list of compatible devices at explore.garmin.com/appcompatibility
3 When used with your compatible smartphone, the Garmin Explore® app and when used with your compatible inReach-enabled Garmin device.
The Bluetooth word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Garmin is under license.
Latest Version
4.6.2
July 05, 2025
Garmin
Internet
Android
1,685,615
Free
com.garmin.android.apps.explore
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User Reviews
Matthew Pautzke
3 years ago
The app is not perfect, but the active topo maps are amazing. I love how easy it is to create new courses with the snap to trail feature. It's seamless to sync them to my watch. It was fun to recreate some hikes from my past and see the elevation change and distance we hiked. To get similar functions on other apps, you have to pay a yearly fee. This alone makes buying a high end Garmin watch worth it for me.
John Guy
2 years ago
App works well for making courses and syncing them to your watch. Easy to place waypoints and adjust as needed. However The app doesn't show elevation while making a course! Elevation is critical to route planning, and it's totally left out of the planning! It does show you elevation once you save a course, but not while making it. Crazy! I'll add stars if this glaring oversight gets fixed. Surely someone made a mistake leaving it out.
A Google user
5 years ago
Just bought the Garmin Marq Adventurer, downloaded Garmin Explorer to my Android phone, Synced between them. Problem is when I set up new Waypoints and sync to the Adventurer, they don't transfer! Also, you can't save maps to your SD card - SERIOUSLY!!! I used to test software for a living and this is a joke! Here's an idea for the developers - make this so it works on a computer and not just phones. It would be MUCH more user friendly having a large screen to plan out routes. UPDATE: I was able to finally get the Waypoints to transfer but ONLY after I added them to a Collection in Explorer. Might be nice if they had instructions that mention this (or maybe I just missed it somewhere).
Nick Daleo
5 years ago
Phone app is difficult to create waypoints or routes on. The web page is amazing! The the only other issue that I have is that when you sync your collections from the app to your watch, it doesn't group the waypoints in their respective collections. For example, have a collection labeled "hunting" that has various waypoints. But when I sync it to my fenix 6x, it puts all those waypoints with other random saved locations in my watch. I'd like them to be grouped like they are on the app.
A Google user
6 years ago
I downloaded the app tonight to create routes for my new Instinct. I had trouble at first getting thing to work, but this step seems to sort out my problerms: Turn on ALL permissions for Explore AND Connect in the phone's app settings. Then open the app & login. My account wouldn't verify in Explore until i realized there were a couple permissions off in the Connect settings. Routes & waypoints sync to my watch, no problem! Not the most intuitive system, but I'm slowly figuring it out.
Clayton Laramie
1 year ago
The other day I was out of cell service, I turn on my inReach to send a text and... the app won't load without cell service because Garmin pushed an update to the app. Terrible user experience for something that's designed to be used offline to not work offline. It should always work without cell service. If you need authentication, make it authenticate from the inReach it's normally connected to. I have been using this for a couple of years and this was the biggest fail yet.
Jake0055
5 years ago
Horrible documentation (non-existent?) and not at all intuitive. It took me forever to figure out that you can't sync ROUTES to Instinct. They have to be TRACKS. Even if you have a collection selected for sync under Devices on the explore.garmin site, you have to select that collection in this app and tell it to sync. Click on the device icon in this app, go to collection manager, and select what collections to sync. Syncing for inReach much more straightforward. Layer selections suck...The end.
Joedy Payne (Cowboy)
8 months ago
Been using the Garmin Instinct and Solar version for some time and have had no issues with the app until now. Since the update, it won't auto-download any of the maps. I've downloaded a few maps manually for offline use and it won't show the topo map in the main map for that area even after manually downloading it. As soon as you fix it I'll change my rating. *** Edit for those who have this issue. Clear the cache and data on the app. Sign back in and allow permissions. All fixed***
RV
8 months ago
Was looking forward to this map update but do not download if you can avoid it. This update completely nerfed the mapping layer especially in Europe where it is completely useless as it doesn't even show any hiking trails, everything is just a thin dark grey line that is barely visible. The app used to be decent but now it's just horrible, went from 4 stars to 1. They are pushing their subscription model so hard that this is just very scummy, expected more.
Aaron Bauer
7 months ago
Garmin makes great hardware, but their software is absolute hot garbage. This latest update is no exception. The ONE feature I was hoping to find in the latest version was the ability to disable its running in the background, but that's not here. They've also apparently removed all of the POI data that was in the previous app and want to charge you $50/year to get it back...data which is included on my $1200 watch. Unbelievable.
Jim
6 months ago
This new version is a huge major step backwards. Did you ever try downloading the satellite photos in the new app? Takes forever and is definitely not seamless. Could go on with more downgrades, but not worth the time or words as we know it is just about the $$$, not customer satisfaction or earned loyalty. Probably the same for Alpha bit I did not update (ruin). A long time, loyal, customer, since before you bought Tritonics.
Martin Faint
6 months ago
Horrible reduction in the usefulness of the app. I used to love it prior to the recent major update and found it extremely useful for planning hikes etc. Now, it is so aggressive at removing detail when you zoom out, it is near useless. I really hope they add some kind of customization options for map details or just try to show the maximum details at all times. The details are there, they are just hidden unless you zoom right in.
Allen Kelley
2 months ago
This app uses more battery power than any other app on my phone even when I haven't used it or opened it in a long time. It frequently shows a notification about retrieving offline maps but I don't have any offline maps saved. I have even deleted all of the offline data that I can from the app. The app was the latest version and my phone is fully updated but I finally had to uninstall it because of these behaviors. Maybe it's not really worth having Garmin devices either
michael longo
4 months ago
Almost always an awful experience. Had an update stuck for years that decided to install for some reason. It used to never synch before the update and now it does but now these idiots got rid of tracks it seems. I used to plan a course, keep every course I've ever done, then save a single track for each day of offline use. Now I can only see every course I've ever done on my GPS device. It seems there's no menu for just my offline maps on the device. Garmin is the worst.
John Smoliga
2 months ago
Terrible app. Lacks serious functionality. Basecamp is much better. Update, I see that there has been an update for this app, which is much improved. It's more intuitive. It would be good if you could add your own customers maps, as you can with Basecamp.
J
3 months ago
I love having an app to supplement my gps device, but this app has always been underwhelming and mostly disappointing. They finally added more map features, but you have to pay $50 annually for it. Look guys, if I'm going to pay OnX prices for a map app, I want OnX quality map features. Simple as. These new map features are mostly loaded in from some government agency that did all the work, nothing custom from Garmin. I love Garmin products, but this app falls short by a lot.
Timur Dincer
4 months ago
Lacking basic features and UI usability. At minimum you should be able to click on a trail and have a course created on the selected trail. When selecting a trail, it should show an elevation map. Activity line (grey color) does not have enough contrast. Zoomed out should show more detail and always show trails. Constant notifications for software updates but no update is available for download.
Christopher Welton
2 weeks ago
The trails disappear when you zoom in. You can not select a trail to get information / plot a route / see elevation details. The sync feature not only drains battery, it's impossible to turn off. I have to uninstall the app to get it to go away from my lock screen. (Android)
Tim Zander
2 weeks ago
Used to be much better. Recently has been crashing frequently. Maybe it is doing updates, but it doesn't let you know, it just crashes immediately upon starting. As well the download process is much worse now. This is such an important part of my how I use my watch and it not working significantly reduces the value I get from my enduro 3
Evan Benoit
6 months ago
Garmin devices are solid! Garmin apps are garbage. I was hoping for better functionality with the new app update but I am (unsurprisingly) disappointed. When uploading a gpx file there is no option to add it to an existing collection, it automatically makes a new collection for each file uploaded, which is less than helpful. Update: cannot place a waypoint without the app crashing
