Garmin Pilot slow to download database updates - any suggestions?

[Rick Junkin]

Garmin Pilot takes many hours to download new nav and map data each cycle. It’s the same on all of my devices. What ForeFlight does in minutes takes up to 5 hours on Garmin Pilot. I have fiber internet at home and have also tried it with Starlink but get the same result.

Has anyone else experienced this? I do have all of the US selected for download, the same as I do for Foreflight.

What am I doing wrong?

[GeeBee]

I experience it with one of my older devices. My new devices rip.

[Rick Junkin]

9 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I experience it with one of my older devices. My new devices rip.

I have an iPhone 14, a 6th generation iPad Pro, and a Mini 6, all with the latest OS. They all do the same thing.

I’m convinced it’s because they belong to me.

[Hank]

Avare takes about 10 minutes to download my selected Sectionals and Approach Plates. The whole U.S. would take longer, and clog up my storage space with places I'll never fly . . .

[Rick Junkin]

1 minute ago, Hank said:

Avare takes about 10 minutes to download my selected Sectionals and Approach Plates. The whole U.S. would take longer, and clog up my storage space with places I'll never fly . . .

Yeah we get it @Hank, you like what you have and that’s wonderful. We’re happy for you. 

[Flyler]

I have an iPad 6 mini as well, and it doesn't take that long to download.  You might try removing the app or clearing the data/storage for it then starting fresh.  Hopefully that does the trick as it is the "nuclear" option...

[Rick Junkin]

Just now, Flyler said:

I have an iPad 6 mini as well, and it doesn't take that long to download.  You might try removing the app or clearing the data/storage for it then starting fresh.  Hopefully that does the trick as it is the "nuclear" option...

Thanks @Flyler, I’m hoping to avoid that. The fact that all of my devices are doing the same thing makes me think it’s something I have selected. None of the devices are storage-limited. But I will give it a try anyway.

 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Rick Junkin said:

Yeah we get it @Hank, you like what you have and that’s wonderful. We’re happy for you. 

Well, everyone is complaining about FF and GP as if they're the only options. Some need to know there are other options. 

I haven’t tried GP, but did mess around a bit with Flight Plan Go, and know people who use it a lot (in Mooneys and in jets). But Avare works well for my needs, so I quit playing with FlightPlan Go.

[Rick Junkin]

Well, all's well that ends well, even if I haven't a clue as to why the downloads previous to today took hours. I just downloaded the latest GP nav and chart data cycle on all three devices in under 10 minutes on each of them. I didn't do anything to troubleshoot or correct the issue, it just worked.

Closing the loop on this one. Thanks for the assistance.

[MikeOH]

@Rick Junkin

Any chance others in your house were streaming movies over that same fiber connection the other times?  Just a thought.

[Rick Junkin]

32 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

@Rick Junkin

Any chance others in your house were streaming movies over that same fiber connection the other times?  Just a thought.

Yeah, I thought of that and confirmed nothing else was sucking bandwidth. Pretty easy to do, it's just me and my wife here. I also tried to load up via Starlink at my hangar and no joy there either. I'm just going to chalk it up to a "huh, how 'bout that" event.

[toto]

GP has always been super crazy slow for me, on a gigabit home internet connection. 

It has never actually downloaded its own updates, which is an ongoing annoyance. I have to manually request the download, and it takes forever. And if I switch apps or the iPad goes to sleep, the download seems to pause until I bring focus back to the app. 

I’m generally a GP fanboy, and this is a pretty minor issue in the scheme of things, but the database downloads are crap. 

[kortopates]

GP is super fast for me. i have both north america and south america jepp and the regular garmin downloads. I download the full 8GB in under 10 min at home with latest mini ipad.
its only a bear with public wifi on a trip. Never at home and my service is with Spectrum.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Flyler]

12 hours ago, Rick Junkin said:

Well, all's well that ends well, even if I haven't a clue as to why the downloads previous to today took hours. I just downloaded the latest GP nav and chart data cycle on all three devices in under 10 minutes on each of them. I didn't do anything to troubleshoot or correct the issue, it just worked.

Closing the loop on this one. Thanks for the assistance.

I work in IT and this is how most issues end up being resolved- it just starts working for an unknown reason.   All you need to do now is tell me your address so I can send you an invoice. 

[Rick Junkin]

49 minutes ago, Flyler said:

I work in IT and this is how most issues end up being resolved- it just starts working for an unknown reason.   All you need to do now is tell me your address so I can send you an invoice. 

The curious thing is that I was about to delete and reload GP on all three devices but decided to exercise the “insanity option” first - try doing the same thing over again and expect a different outcome - and low and behold it worked. I didn’t even do the common sense power off - power on step.

As I discovered throughout my career, how you hold your mouth as you’re executing the steps to operate any technology influences the FM that makes all of this stuff work.

[TangoTango]

I wonder if the problem was congestion on the Garmin end of the pipe. If enough people are downloading chart updates at the same time, maybe it slows down until you try again at a less congested time?

For what it's worth, I use the GP on Android and never have any trouble downloading chart updates. Maybe Garmin hosts those updates on a different server. I suppose it's also possible Garmin uses some kind of regional hosting solution for update data and some regions get more congested than others.

[Rick Junkin]

1 hour ago, TangoTango said:

I wonder if the problem was congestion on the Garmin end of the pipe.

I had that thought as well but I couldn't find any mention of it online anywhere. You would think if this was a "thing" there would be some discussion of it on one of the aviation forums.

However, I'll try to experiment with that idea when the next cycle comes out. Retired guys with time on their hands look forward to these kinds of activities. 

[Fly Boomer]

7 hours ago, Rick Junkin said:

The curious thing is that I was about to delete and reload GP on all three devices but decided to exercise the “insanity option” first - try doing the same thing over again and expect a different outcome - and low and behold it worked. I didn’t even do the common sense power off - power on step.

As I discovered throughout my career, how you hold your mouth as you’re executing the steps to operate any technology influences the FM that makes all of this stuff work.

Whenever I was having a problem with our software, invariably one of my colleagues would say "Huh, works on my machine".

[McMooney]

could be garmin, cloud provider, content delivery provider, internet  who knows.

I've noticed speed can be pretty random.

android downloads work better than apple

[Justin Schmidt]

15 hours ago, Flyler said:

I work in IT and this is how most issues end up being resolved- it just starts working for an unknown reason.   All you need to do now is tell me your address so I can send you an invoice. 

You forgot the shutdown wait 10 sec reboot

[Rick Junkin]

Well, here we go again. I hadn't updated the last cycle of Garmin Pilot data on my iPad because I had sort of decided to stick with Foreflight. But, I decided to take another look at GP after some of the latest feature updates/additions. I initiated the download of 28GB of data and I'm looking at "9 hours remaining" in the GP download window. I'm at home on a 1GB fiber WiFi network.

Just for fun I closed all of the apps on my iPad, opened Foreflight and deleted all of its data. Then I initiated a new download of 28+GB of Foreflight data. It only took 8 minutes...!

I really really want to like Garmin Pilot and things like this just keep driving me away. I know, I've asked this question before, but has anyone else discovered a smoking gun solution to slow GP data updates? I just tried the same thing on my iPhone and got a whopping "64 hours remaining" for 24GB. 

[Greg Ellis]

On 5/3/2026 at 4:02 PM, Rick Junkin said:

Well, here we go again. I hadn't updated the last cycle of Garmin Pilot data on my iPad because I had sort of decided to stick with Foreflight. But, I decided to take another look at GP after some of the latest feature updates/additions. I initiated the download of 28GB of data and I'm looking at "9 hours remaining" in the GP download window. I'm at home on a 1GB fiber WiFi network.

Just for fun I closed all of the apps on my iPad, opened Foreflight and deleted all of its data. Then I initiated a new download of 28+GB of Foreflight data. It only took 8 minutes...!

I really really want to like Garmin Pilot and things like this just keep driving me away. I know, I've asked this question before, but has anyone else discovered a smoking gun solution to slow GP data updates? I just tried the same thing on my iPhone and got a whopping "64 hours remaining" for 24GB. 

I don't know what the answer is for you but I can say that I have been a GP user for about 4 years now since I updated my panel in my airplane and I have never had a download come anywhere close to 9 hours.  In fact, my current internet here at my office where I did my last huge download due to issues with GP (I removed all data and the App and reloaded everything) took about 2 hours on a 195Mb/s internet service.  My updates usually take 10-15 minutes or so.  I can live with this.  Not sure why yours is taking so long on an internet service that is about 5 times faster than mine.  I wonder if something else is going on but I am not a computer whiz like others on the forum.

Even my updates at home on a measly 50Mb/s only take about 45 minutes or so.  Once again, I can live with this since where I live it is the only service available to me.

[Rick Junkin]

On 5/3/2026 at 5:02 PM, Rick Junkin said:

Well, here we go again. I hadn't updated the last cycle of Garmin Pilot data on my iPad because I had sort of decided to stick with Foreflight. But, I decided to take another look at GP after some of the latest feature updates/additions. I initiated the download of 28GB of data and I'm looking at "9 hours remaining" in the GP download window. I'm at home on a 1GB fiber WiFi network.

Just for fun I closed all of the apps on my iPad, opened Foreflight and deleted all of its data. Then I initiated a new download of 28+GB of Foreflight data. It only took 8 minutes...!

I really really want to like Garmin Pilot and things like this just keep driving me away. I know, I've asked this question before, but has anyone else discovered a smoking gun solution to slow GP data updates? I just tried the same thing on my iPhone and got a whopping "64 hours remaining" for 24GB. 

I heard from a friend who also has the same issue, and it turns out we are both using AT&T 1G fiber WiFi at home. Is anyone else with this combination - Garmin Pilot and AT&T 1G fiber WiFi - seeing normal database download speeds over WiFi? 

Ironically they also see normal download speeds if they disconnect from their WiFi and use cellular data on T-Mobile. I've got AT&T mobile but I'm going to try that at the next data cycle. 

 

[Echo]

I think this is a internet provider issue.  I have zero problem with updates on G Pilot.

[MikeOH]

I'm with @Echo on this...I think your ISP is deliberately throttling you.

Maybe you have a friend with a different ISP that you can try?

When you had your one success, what time of day was it?  Try the same time, maybe? Or, 2 AM