Garmin Instinct users may face intermittent issues with a failed firmware updates. The issue has been reported by Garmin Instinct 3 and Garmin Instinct 3 Solar smartwatch users.
If you get an error -“Not enough memory” for a firmware update on Garmin Instinct watch (any model of Instinct watch), you may follow the instructions on this page to clean storage on the Garmin Instinct smartwatch.
Before proceeding with the cleanup, it is imporant to note that Garmin Instinct watches come with very less available storage. So, a firmware update may not happen if the space is unavailable on the Instinct watch.
So, let us free up some storage from the Garmin Instinct watch to let the firmware update complete successfully.
Which files do we clean from Garmin Instinct?
Older Garmin Instinct watches had very little memory. But, the firmware updates were smaller.
Recent watches like the Garmin Instinct 3 Solar have higher memory. But the firmware for these Instinct watches requires more memory.
Therefore, before attempting a new firmware update, you could clean the existing files from your Garmin Instinct watch. Some files that you may remove may include data from the following:
- Old activities
- Old firmware temporary files
- Unused apps
- Unused course data
- Unused activities
To delete files from the Garmin Instinct watches, you may use the watch to clean the following data:
- /GARMIN/Activity/ – all files
- //GARMIN/RemoteSW/ – all files
- //GARMIN/Debug/ – all files
- //GARMIN/Courses/ – remove unneeded courses
- //GARMIN/Workouts/ – remove unneeded workouts
- //GARMIN/gmap*.img
Once you have cleaned the files from the Garmin Instinct Solar 3 watch (or another variant of Garmin Instinct smartwatch), you can proceed with completing a firmware update.
You can connect the Instinct smartwatch to your computer and use the Garmin Express application to force a firmware update.
Or, you can update the firmware manually from the Instinct watch. To perform a manual update use the following commands:
System ยป Software Update menu
Either of these two methods will bring the latest firmware to your Garmin Instinct 3 Solar or the Garmin Instinct smartwatch.