The IT Nerd

Long time readers know that I have been covering Hyundai Canada’s struggles to get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to their fleet of cars. They eventually did get there in terms of newly purchased cars and the ability to upgrade some of their existing cars. And they did that for free for a while. But that program ended some time ago.

Now As of this year, numerous KIA and Hyundai models in Canada have access to map updates for free. And if you don’t presently have Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, you can get that for free as well. Here’s how you do it:

• First, you need to have a 32GB class 10 SD card handy. If you don’t have one, they’re cheap enough to source on Amazon or on B&H Photo.
• Next, surf to the Mapnsoft website and choose your brand.
• If you don’t have an account create one. Otherwise log in with your account details.
• Pick your country, model year, and model.

This will (hopefully) take you to a screen like this:

You can view the instructions in terms of updating it as well as read about the features that you can get with this update. While you can order it for $30 and have it shipped to you on an SD card (Which is way cheaper than it has been in the past). But you really want to click “download it to free” to go that route.

Now I won’t walk through the entire process to update your infotainment system as that’s very well documented. But here’s the highlights. It takes a while to do as you have to download software for your PC or Mac to download, which will in turn download the software for your infotainment system and put it on your SD card. But having done this myself, I started this at 7PM. By 7:20PM it had downloaded the update and started the process of putting out on the SD card. But by 10PM it still wasn’t done. I left it overnight and when I woke up to it having completed the process. So I don’t know how long it actually takes, but it wasn’t quick. Then you take the SD card to your car and use it to update your infotainment system. That takes about 45 minutes and you need the engine running to do it. My suggestion would be to take a drive until it is done. But this part is completely in line with other updates that I have done.

Gripes? The Mac version of this software isn’t notarized by Apple. Which means you have to hop through a few hoops to get this to run as it sets off Gatekeeper because it thinks its a virus. Mapnsoft should really fix that as those hoops won’t be able to be bypassed.

This is a very good development for Hyundai and Kia owners in Canada as those owners can keep their maps and infotainment systems up to date. If you’ve held off on updating your infotainment system, you don’t need to hold off anymore as you can update your infotainment system with your only investment being time.

This entry was posted on October 1, 2020 at 9:00 am and is filed under Tips with tags Canada, Hyundai, Kia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.