Drivesmart 66 for Traffic Only

Welcome to The Factory.

I'm writing this from my PC without going to the car to check my DriveLuxe. Correct me if I'm not stating the correct response, anyone.

When you first pair the Drivesmart with your phone, it'll likely default to including everything including its use for phone calls.

If your GPS device is like my DriveLuxe, from the GPS Main startup screen while connected to the phone, tap Apps. Then on the GPS screen, tap Drivesmart, then tap your connected phone. Uncheck the phone box but keep everything else checked. Then save this and go back to the GPS main screen. That should let your vehicle's system handle hands-free phone calls and not have the phone also try to connect through the GPS, while allowing the GPS to get traffic, weather, etc from the phone.

If your Drivesmart is like my DriveLuxe, the main GPS screen will shows icons at the top including one for Bluetooth connected, one for phone connected, and one for Drivesmart connected. You'll know all is well when you power up the GPS within range of the cellphone, and within a minute or less, you have the Bluetooth and Smartphone icons but not the phone.

I expect that you know this already, but to have the DriveSmart not connect to the phone, it's a setting in the GPS, not the smartphone's settings, that needs to be altered.

I will admit that sometimes my Bluetooth pairing and functions seem to forget what I set them to do but when I correct the issue once or twice, it seems to stick forever.

Yes, you can cut it off by turning off the phone in GPS settings. The problem is, at least on the Drivesmart 66, it doesn't remember that. The next time you start the car and it connects to the phone, it's going to go back to phone and traffic being turned on and you have to do it again. Which I usually forget until I want to answer the phone handsfree or send a text. The GPS isn't nearly as good for this as my vehicle for sound quality and doing what I want to do.

Garmin has some reasonable information here:
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/drivesmart55-65/EN-U...

Welcome to POI-Factory alanq.

You will quickly learn that this is a great place for GPS knowledge and Custom POIs. You will ultimately learn that this is a community, that will always be happy to offer assistance.

It's also a site that will never SPAM you and will always treat you with respect.

Yours is certainly not a dumb question, but you may on occasion, think that you're asking something that should be easy, but this group will happily answer everything. In many cases, its just a case of Garmin not making the answer easy to find, which still frustrates me on occasion even after 16 years on this site.

Good Luck.