Zumo User Forums

The music player on the Zumo XT appears to have a 5,000 song limit. I have well over that many songs on my 128 GB SD card (formatted as Fat32 using AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard). When I go to the music player, it shows 1/5000 when I startup. When I check my artists it shows about the first half of them. Has anyone else run into this and is there a way around it?

Further info on what I’ve observed regarding the song limit on the Zumo XT and a possible workaround. When playing music stored on the device, the music player app displays two numbers separated by a slanted line above the player controls. The first number shows the number of the song being played during that listening session starting with 1 and counting up for each song played. The second number is the number of songs stored on the Zumo XT (either internally or on the SD card).

If I load less than 5,000 songs on my SD card, the music player shows the actual number of songs. If I load more than 5,000, say 6,000, it shows 5,000. All the songs exist on the SD card, but the Zumo XT only sees or loads the first 5,000. It is from that first 5,000 that the browse options (All Songs, Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists) display data. I tried creating a playlist of songs past the first 5,000 but it wasn’t recognized.

So, even though you can physically load more than 5,000 songs on a large SD card, the Zumo XT will limit you to the first 5,000 songs on the card.

I have my full music library on my iPhone and the iPhone player can access everything. I can choose my iPhone via Bluetooth on the XT and have access to my full library. Now that I have a wired in USB phone charger on my bike, that’s a viable option. When I’m playing music on the Zumo XT via bluetooth from my phone, the two numbers I mentioned above are not shown on the XT screen.

Thanks for this it is great to get these user insights into undocumented "features".
I also have a music library of multiples of 5000 songs but I have so far transferred less than that to the card in the XT. I tend to have +/- 1000 ish songs on the card at any one time and just rotate them in and out as my tastes and the seasons change.
Just out of interest I have just returned from 5 days riding. On 4 of those days I had music playing on shuffle most of the time and it worked pretty well perfectly and I'm struggling to remember whether I had many repeats on songs. I guess I probably had a few but not enough to notice.

I had sent my question to Garmin. Here's what they replied:

Product.Support@garmin.com
Thu, Jan 20, 8:45 AM
Is there a limit of 5000 songs that can be organized on the Zumo XT? I have more than that on my SD card but the Zumo XT only seems to see the first 5000. Is there any way around this?

Hello Ronald,
Yes, the Zumo XT can only recognize up to 5000 songs and there is no way around that.
Thank you for choosing Garmin,
Anthony, Product Support, Garmin International