How to Add a QWERTY Keyboard to the Garmin Nuvi

Adding a QWERTY keyboard to a Garmin Nuvi is not as difficult as you may think.

Some older models of the Garmin Nuvi, such as the Garmin Nuvi 200W, lack the option to set the keyboard to QWERTY. This makes typing address information difficult, if not annoying. Fortunately, you have a way around this issue. To enable the QWERTY keyboard on your Nuvi, you can manually edit a language file. You need a computer with a text editor installed.

Things You'll Need

• USB cable

Instructions

1. Turn on the computer and connect it to the Garmin Nuvi by using the USB cable that came with the GPS. The Nuvi will be recognized by the computer as an external storage device.

2. Open your computer's file browser, navigate to the external storage device and locate the "Language" folder. Inside the folder, you'll see multiple language files with .gtt extensions.

3. Make a backup of the "American_english.gtt" file. You will use this backup to restore the original file in case something goes wrong.

4. Right-click the "American_english.gtt" file, select "Open With" and choose Notepad from the resulting list. The file is text-based, so it will display properly in Notepad.

5. Replace everything you see between the "<upperkbrd>" and "</upperkbrd>" statements with "QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM,." to insert the QWERTY keyboard.

6. Replace everything you see between the "<lowerkbrd>" and "</lowerkbrd>" statements with "qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm,." and save the file, overwriting the old one.

7. Restart the Garmin Nuvi and enter a new address. You can now use a perfectly functional QWERTY keyboard.

Tips & Warnings

• In case you upgrade the software on your Garmin Nuvi, you'll have to edit the language file again.

References

• SmartLab Software: Notepad Tutorial