Does a GPX export include your photos and video clips?

The short answer

No. A GPX file is a sequence of coordinates — latitude, longitude, usually elevation and a timestamp — plus, optionally, a handful of standalone waypoints. There is no field in the format for an attached photo, a video clip or an audio recording, so none of it comes along in the export. The media stays exactly where it was recorded; only the shape of the route travels.

What a GPX file actually holds

Open a GPX file and, underneath the XML, it is a plain list of points, each one a latitude and longitude with an elevation and a time attached. Strung together in order, that list is what draws the line on a map. A file can also carry waypoints — single, standalone points with a name and sometimes a short line of text — but even a waypoint's text field is a label, not a place to attach a file. The format was designed to move a route between mapping tools cheaply, as plain text, and every field in it exists to describe where and when, never what something looked or sounded like.

Where the media actually lives instead

A photo, video clip or voice note recorded on a hike is its own file, stored the way any photo or video on a phone is stored, separate from the GPX text file entirely. An app that pins media to a route keeps that link on its own side — inside its own database or its own history view — associating a point on the track with a file sitting elsewhere. Export the route as GPX and only the coordinate list crosses over; the link between a point and a piece of media, and the media itself, both stay behind in the app that made them.

Why the format works this way

GPX exists so a route recorded in one app can open correctly in a completely different one — Strava, Garmin Connect, Komoot and most mapping tools all read the same structure. That interoperability depends on the format staying small and predictable: a file of plain coordinates opens the same way everywhere, whereas a file with embedded video would be enormous, slow to parse, and full of content most receiving apps have no use for and no way to display. Leaving media out is not a limitation anyone forgot to fix — it is what keeps a GPX file portable at all. CSV export works the same way for the same reason: rows of numbers, no attachments.

Things that trip people up

• Expecting a photo pin to show up after import elsewhere — it will not, because the pin was never part of the GPX file to begin with; only the app that recorded it keeps that connection.
• Assuming the media is gone because it is missing from the exported file — it usually is not. The file it is missing from is the wrong place to look; the photo or clip is still sitting in the app or the phone's own storage.
• Renaming or moving the exported GPX file and expecting it to somehow "carry" the media with it — a GPX file is plain text with no attachments, so moving it moves nothing but coordinates.
• Trying to reconstruct which photo belongs to which part of the route from the GPX file alone — the timestamps in the file can be lined up against a photo's own timestamp by hand, but the GPX file itself carries no reference to any image.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam pins a video clip, a photo or a voice note to the exact point on the route where you captured it, and replaying a saved route shows those pinned where they were recorded, with the elevation profile running underneath. That pinning lives inside the app. Exporting the same route as GPX 1.1 or CSV — for a single walk or the whole history at once — carries the coordinates only, which is what lets the file open cleanly in Strava, Garmin Connect or Komoot; the photos, clips and voice notes stay in TrailCam itself, where replaying the route is what brings everything back together. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.