How to import a GPX file into Avenza Maps

The short answer

Open Avenza Maps, use its import option to bring in the .gpx file from Files or iCloud Drive, and the track appears as a line layer you can show over any map currently loaded in the app. On an iPhone, sharing a .gpx file to Avenza Maps from the Files app or from the share sheet of the app that recorded it works the same way.

Why Avenza works differently from Strava or Gaia GPS

Most GPS apps show your route on a live web map that streams in as you scroll. Avenza's core product is the opposite: a static, georeferenced PDF — a paper map that has been calibrated so a phone's GPS coordinates land in the right place on it, pixel for pixel. That is what lets it show a moving position with the phone in airplane mode, on a trail with no coverage at all. A GPX track dropped into that world is not an activity to browse; it is a line laid over a specific map you already trust, useful for comparing where you actually walked against where a permit boundary, a ranger district or a printed route was drawn.

Getting the file in

From the iPhone share sheet

If a .gpx file sits in Files, in an email, or comes straight out of the export action of the app that recorded it, sharing it to Avenza Maps through the iOS share sheet adds it as a layer without leaving the app you started in.

From inside Avenza Maps

Avenza Maps also has its own import option that reads a .gpx file directly from Files or iCloud Drive. Either route lands the track in the same place — as a layer you can toggle on and off, sitting over whichever map is currently open.

What actually lands, and what does not

A GPX track — an ordered, timestamped sequence of points — comes in as a continuous line. Waypoints, if the file has any, come in as separate pins rather than part of the line. What does not come across is anything outside the coordinate data: photos, video clips and voice notes recorded along the walk are separate files with no field for them in GPX, so the layer shows the shape of the route, not what you captured on it.

The imported line sits on top of whatever map is currently loaded, which matters more in Avenza than in most tools — a track imports the same way regardless of the map showing underneath it, so it is worth loading the right map first if the point is to compare the two.

Things that trip people up

• The track seems to have disappeared — it imported as a layer, but the map currently open does not cover that area, or the layer's visibility toggle is off.
• Only pins show up, no line — the file contained waypoints rather than a track, which is common in files exported from tools built around marking locations rather than recording a continuous route.
• Nothing offers to open the file on the phone — check the extension is still .gpx. Email attachments sometimes get rewritten as .txt, and iOS will not offer Avenza as an option for that.
• The line looks right but sits in the wrong place relative to features on the map — the map itself may not be as precisely calibrated as it looks; this is a property of the source PDF, not of the imported track.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam records a route with GPS on an iPhone and exports it as GPX 1.1 or CSV, for a single walk or the whole history at once — the format Avenza Maps, along with Strava, Garmin Connect and most mapping tools, reads directly. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.