Navigon (.cruiser, .freshroute, .route, .rte, .storage, .txt)

Navigon was a German navigation company whose MobileNavigator software and personal navigation devices used a family of small text route files — .rte, .route, .freshroute, .storage and .cruiser, one per product generation.

At a glance

History

Navigon was founded in 1991 in Würzburg, Germany, and built both personal navigation devices and navigation software for phones and carmakers. Garmin completed its acquisition of Navigon AG on 26 July 2011. Garmin removed the Navigon apps from the app stores in 2018 and announced the end of Navigon products and customer service on 1 December 2020. The brand is gone; the files people saved are not.

Where it is used

These files came from MobileNavigator on Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android and iOS, and from Navigon's own PNDs. The Cruiser variant belongs to Navigon Cruiser, the motorcycle-oriented app, and is still traded in motorcycle touring circles.

Structure

All the Navigon route formats are small plain-text files listing waypoints in order, differing mostly in field layout and header between product generations — which is why RouteConverter carries eight of them rather than one. They store a plan: an ordered set of destinations, without recorded timestamps or sensor data.

How widespread

A discontinued vendor format with an active afterlife. Nothing sold today reads them, so the practical use is one-directional: get an old Navigon route into GPX and onto whatever device replaced it.

RouteConverter support

Specifications and documentation

• Wikipedia: Navigon
• Garmin (acquirer of Navigon)

Related conversions

• Navigon Mobile Navigator to GPX