Garmin Messenger™ Reviews

Inreach mini is already setup on my iPhone and garmin earthmate app works fine. But messenger can’t find my inreach even if I unpair and start over.

Same as other review. Inreach mini won’t pair

I was stoked to get GarminMessenger until I found out that it won’t pair with my Mini2 device. Garmin team, add this device and I’m sure you will get more positive reviews.

Don’t download GarminMessenger to a secondary device like an iPad. My friend tried to check in from the field and the messages went to an iPad we hardly use and I didn’t see it for nearly a day. Once I downloaded GarminMessenger to my phone, I could see meaages but could not respond from GarminMessenger . Also, deleting GarminMessenger does not restore your texting capability; you need to first “deactivate” your account. This option should be labeled something more accurate like “unlink phone number from Garmin Messenger” because I also have an InReach and I didn’t want to deactivate *that* account.

This has to be one of the dumbest apps out there. Won’t message my contacts directly, they must be “ invited into the community…”

Who thinks this stuff up? Fire some marketing weenies and hire competent app designers and programmers.

Instructions walk you through creating a new account (I already have one). Will not connect to my existing inReach Mini

Don’t expect to operate quickly with your Mac computer and hardware. Software hasn’t been update for Mac hardware in several years

Needs map incorporated in Messenger app for tracback feature. Or have the inreach messenger compatible with Explore app??

Button on one of the device activation screens for inreach mini 2 is broken (leads to frozen app state)

Won’t connect, doesn’t show tracks, no courses. Lots of room to improve.

Awful instructions, can’t understand app UI.

So hard to get this sucker to work

As a friend of an avid inReach user, it’s nice to finally have a way to communicate with them when they’re on or off the grid, without having to guess which number to send messages to. The super simple and quick sign up process was delightful.

Support for the inreach mini 2 was advertised at launch. When is it going to drop?

Update: the inreach mini 2 has been updated, and all is now well with the world and GarminMessenger. Big thanks!

So, like most responsible adults, I use a password manager app. For some reason, if I navigate to my password manager during the create account experience, it will start over. I also can't paste the password from my app into the set password field.

Why do you need to make this so difficult? I love needing to have my laptop open on the side just to type a password in to my phone 🙄

GarminMessenger is super easy to use seamlessly between cellular texting and satellite.

That is is the message I got when I tried to pair it. Seriously Garmin? For a device that costs $100 more than the messenger, you would think this messaging app could be used on more than one kind of device.

👍👍👍

Got a new Garmin InReach Messenger and a new iPhone 14 and can’t get the two devices to pair. Don’t know if it’s GarminMessenger or the InReach device, but both are Garmin. Worthless device and application combination. Garmin, you can do much better…

The title pretty much says it all. GarminMessenger doesn’t support the gpsmap 66i which makes no sense at all and is a huge reason to not buy that model. Wish I had known that before I bought it!

Not compatible with the original InReach Mini. Come on Garmin, don’t be so quick to try and force us to always upgrade our hardware device with your petty software games.

I am stuck at the verification message (step 0). Per Garmin’s instructions I have tried “without VPN,” disconnecting Apple’s private relay, wifi only, cell only, etc.

While I love the functionality of consolidated messaging, the ability to se plans, updates, settings, etc on app and by far is the best inReach experience to date.. I’d like the ability to tap and hold a message that has not been sent , failed to send or is in pending status and get a connect menu with the option to resend /retry sending the message. Also… while all tones the device supports are listed in settings.. they make zero sound when you tap them… so add the actual sounds to GarminMessenger so the user can select tones for the messenger based on what they actually hear and prefer and not blindly guessing. Also maybe add a subscript to each message bubble with “status / time stamp” for each message.

Poor software implementation that barely works with an excellent hardware device.

Won’t sync with my iPhone

The InReach device and accompanying app are excellent in the case of an emergency, to call for help. App could be better designed where I can monitor my sons travels out in the open ocean. For example, receive text or email notices of his movement and locations from time to time.

Currently, the inReach and website can show you a map of the person’s locations. However, one has to log into the website map in order to see the person’s location as opposed to… it would be nice having notices sent to me via text or email of his locations along his journey.

Logging into Facebook and posting is completely broken

Pairing with iPhone in a wide open field and it fails over and over and over.

I tried to use GarminMessenger while in the backcountry with no cell signal. It required authentication, which I couldn’t give, you guessed it, without a cell signal! What good is GarminMessenger if it doesn’t work when I need it? The reason I bought the device and pay for a subscription is that I can communicate when I am where there is no cell signal!

My wife bought a garmin inreach for an up coming backpacking trip. She cannot figure out how to program it after days of trying. We are taking it back. The lack of information on how to program it is appalling.

And she works at REI which sells these. She will not be recommending them to customers from this point forward.

Nothing works because it will not upload software. Absolutely no tech support except online videos which can't solve this problem. There is no one to call. It's horrible.

Garmin apps work great overall but it would sure be nice if the Garmin apps could pull GPS location information from compatible Garmin device rather than relying on smartphone’s location services. On multi day trips I have to turn off my phone’s location service to save battery. What’s the point of having two separate GPS systems running simultaneously???

Garmin supports a weird subset of the inReach devices with this Messenger app — in particular no support for the original inReach mini.

GarminMessenger also suffers the iMessage problem in that if you’ve used it once it will default to send all text messages there rather than to SMS, even if you’ve since uninstalled GarminMessenger .

I can pair to my phone (iPhone 14) via standard Bluetooth connect. I can see on my inreach that it is paired. However it never pairs in GarminMessenger . I have updated the firmware to latest on the mini. Very disappointed as the device is not old at all…

This is the most unintuitive app I have ever seen. Trying to restart my subscription and nothing works.

This is an emergency device. I want to pair with all my phones so if one isn’t working i can use another. Why have this limit???

I have just started configuring this device. When attempting to link to Facebook, I had some difficulty because I have Facebook pages which I manage. GarminMessenger wanted me to pick a page to post to. I didn’t want GarminMessenger to post to either of those pages and it would not allow me to just post to myself because my Facebook account isn’t a separate page. So I had to go in and create a separate page so that I could pick that from the list. Thought you’d wanna know.

Countless attempts but error saying “Something went wrong. Try again later.”
Useless at this point.

I like it but it could pair with other messenger apps so it can message across apps

When our son goes hunting two miles high in the Rocky Mountains and freezing temperatures every year, we now have more peace-of-mind, given two way communications plus the coordinates.
Four other men along with him
Thank you, Garmin Messenger!

Try again later. Useless app does not work at all and tech support not able to fix. Returning very expensive paperweight back to the store.

I was hoping to be able to directly ping another InReach device from GarminMessenger. I can send a message, but if the other user is unable to respond, there is no good way to locate them unless I have web access to MapShare. This is a longstanding gripe I have with Garmin InReach. Maybe they should call them “CantReach.”

Very confusing as to why some devices support the Messenger app vs. the Explore app It would be more powerful to have a consolidated app with the same features across all devices.

As stated in another review, it is important to deactivate the account when switching phones. GarminMessenger should automatically support the paired phone.

Also, kind of weird that they named GarminMessenger “Messenger.” That is the name of the new minimalist device itself, as well as the Facebook Messenger app.

I try to reinstall GarminMessenger several times but it does not work, can verify my number

Is it melodramatic to say that this is the best app I’ve ever used to date

Can’t process activation yet. Has frozen multiple times.

My husband just took this on a weeklong solo backpacking trip. Then happy I can track his movements and he can send pre-programmed messages that he’s OK but those messages are supposed to be unlimited For our package. I can’t find a way to contact customer service.

I have scoured GarminMessenger and the inReach messenger device and the words “pair device” do not exist. This should be a priority and I’ve wasted 30 minutes trying to pair this thing. Activating an account should be easy too but those words are only on the device, not on GarminMessenger …

Perfect

I’m still figuring it out. So far, everything seems to be working well. When I updated my Check in messages, it tells me to make sure to sync. Not sure what that means!

I used to send InReach starting and safely stopping messages to my people. But now they have to download test I another messenger app, this d time from Garmin. Why should they? It used to work just fine with whatever messaging apps they have on their phone. Garmin basically bricked my $600 InReach device.