Imagine the scene: you’re at the café having that well earned coffee and specialist scientific body fuel (OK, cake), chatting with your mates and life feels good. So good in fact, that you completely forget to pick up your Garmin GPS and ride off without it. Now, assuming there are still decent honest people in the world (and most are, contrary to what the mass media seem to want us to believe), the average person will resist the urge to put your beloved device on eBay and instead wonder how they might set about returning it to the owner. Did you know that you can configure your Garmin device to display a customised message when it starts up?
Editing the startup text of your Garmin Edge bike GPS
1. Connect the unit to your computer via USB.
2. Navigate to the files on the internal memory (not the micro SD card, if you have one).
3. Look for a file called startup.txt
4. Open the file to edit it, in something like notepad. Whatever you type here will be displayed when the device boots up later.
Depending on what mapping you’ve got installed, the boot up time can vary. Some people report that it boots up too quickly to read the startup text. Not to worry – you can also include a time delay, just alter the number in the line where it says <display = 0 >
5. Save the file, disconnect from the computer and turn the unit on. Shut it down, then reboot once more.
You should see your custom startup message.
Easy! Please share your ideas in the comments about what message to include in the startup file.
Very useful tip ! I included the following for 30 seconds on startup
Full Name
DOB
Full Address
Mobile phone
Home phone
Blood Group
Next of Kin
NOK Mobile
Will this work on an Edge 705?
I just tried adding a startup.txt file in the garmin folder of my 705. It didn’t display the text. So it doesn’t look like it’ll work.
It works on the Edge 510, 800, 810. It does NOT work on the 200, 500 or 705 :-(
Cheers for the explanation. I have just changed my startup details. I haven’t left as many details as some but I have included a home phone number and NOK mobile number.
Wow – that is very useful – thanks. I would never have found that by myself.
Hi Andrew, glad you found the site then, thanks for commenting! Alan
Can this be done on the Garmin 1000?
Thanks
Yes you can personalise the startup text on your Garmin Edge 1000. Just edit the file called startup.txt in the root “Garmin” folder on the device.
Having trouble with set of my new Garmin 1000
Great tip thank you!!
Thank you, Work very well with my Garmin 810.
Because, I bought the package with SD Card and maps boot during bit longer (to upload all maps)
and message is there…
Great tip, thank you. Just playing around with it to make it perfect, 2 quick questions:
1 – is it necessary to include all the text within the characters?
2 – the display = N feature doesn’t seem to be working, it simply displays “display=whatever number I’ve typed”. Does this line need to be typed in differently in some way?
Thank you.
Symon
Sounds like you may have used the wrong tags, so that it’s actually displaying that as text instead of using it as an instruction to delay the boot. Are you sure it’s within <> symbols?
Tried this on the 810, FYI only the first 3 lines are displayed on start up.
Only 4 lines show on Garmin 520. Anyway to get ride of the logo?
I have no startup.txt in the root folder of my Garmin Edge 1000?
G:\GARMIN\
You can just create one and place it there yourself.
In “Windows” I think you’ll find it in: :\GARMIN\Garmin\startup.txt
On a Mac it’s in /Volumes/GARMIN/Garmin/startup.txt