How to view Garmin Dash Cam footage on a PC or Mac

Garmin dashcams save files with short names and no date. Here is how to watch Mini, 47, 57, 67W and X-series footage on a computer, sorted by when it was recorded.

Garmin's dashcams, from the tiny Dash Cam Mini to the 67W and the X-series, are compact, reliable and easy to set up. Garmin's software focus is the Garmin Drive phone app, which handles live view, saving clips and settings over Wi-Fi.

On a computer, Garmin footage has a particular problem: the files have short names like GRMN0045.MP4, with no date or time in them. Sorting them by name tells you nothing about when they were recorded.

How Tripframe handles Garmin files

When a file name does not contain a date, Tripframe uses the date and time the file was last written, which for a dashcam is the moment the clip finished recording. That is close enough to put every clip on the right day and in the right order.

Put the microSD card in your computer.
Open the app in Chrome or Edge.
Choose the card or its DCIM folder.

Every clip lands on the right day, newest or oldest first, with a thumbnail, so you can find a drive at a glance instead of opening files one by one.

Things to know

Copy carefully. If you copy Garmin files to another drive first, some copy tools reset the file date to the moment of copying. Open the card directly, or use a copy method that keeps dates (a normal drag-and-drop in Explorer or Finder does).
Multiple Garmin cameras. The Garmin Dash Cam Auto-Sync feature records several cameras into one app. On the card, each camera has its own files. Tripframe shows them all, but it can only pair them as front and rear when the file names say which camera they come from.
GPS. Garmin stores GPS in its own way, which Tripframe does not read yet. The video plays fully, without the map.

Saving a still

Pause, step frame by frame with , and ., and press S. The PNG is named after the date and time of that frame, which is useful because the original file name is not.