Garmin DriveSmart 66 finally gets a lock screen

This was a long time coming, but better late than never.

It's kind of funny, because Garmin was in fact ahead of its time and then grossly behind the time at the same time.

I'll explain.

In early-early nuvi models like the nuvi 250W from the late 2000s, there was in fact a section called Garmin Lock.

First you went here:

You would be given a notice what Garmin Lock would do:

Then you'd enter a 4-digit PIN:

After that, you would be prompted for the PIN every time the unit powered on. Simple and easy...

...and then Garmin took out that feature in later models after that. No more Garmin Lock. This is the way things stayed for well over a decade. And oh yes, people were really upset about it. They complained. Loudly. Garmin didn't put it back.

At long last, Garmin finally brought back the lock screen.

In one of the more recent system software updates, the DriveSmart 66, DriveSmart 76 and DriveSmart 86 now has the lock screen that was taken away over a decade ago.

From Settings > Device, there is now the option for Screen Lock:

...where you can set a PIN for every power-on:

...and then enter a PIN that's 4 to 16 digits long of your choosing:

For those early-early models, the maximum PIN length was 4 digits, meaning a number between 0000 and 9999. Now the PIN can be a number between 0000000000000000 and 9999999999999999.

The nice part here is the PIN doesn't have to be 16 digits long. It can be 4 digits, 5, 8, 10, whatever. Anything from 4 to 16 digits in length can be used.

Garmin was really late to the party putting a lock screen back into their navigators, but it's there now, and that's good.

Published 2025 Aug 7