How to import a GPX file into Garmin Connect

The short answer

On the Garmin Connect website, open Activities and look for the import action there — it takes a .gpx file from your computer and builds an activity from the points, working out distance, moving time and elevation itself. Garmin Connect can import the same kind of file as a course instead, through its course tools, if what you actually want is a route to follow rather than a record of a walk you already did.

On an iPhone, support for handing a file straight to Garmin Connect through the share sheet varies more than it does for some other services. If Garmin Connect does not show up as an option when you tap share on a .gpx file, the website's import page is the reliable fallback — get the file onto the phone or a computer first, then bring it in from there.

Where the GPX file comes from in the first place

Garmin Connect only has a walk that was either recorded on a Garmin device or handed over as a file from somewhere else. Most GPS recorders have an export or share action that writes the points logged — latitude, longitude, elevation and a timestamp for each — into a single .gpx file. TrailCam can export a single route or an entire history this way, in GPX 1.1, which is the version Garmin Connect and most other services expect.

Getting it into Garmin Connect

From the Garmin Connect website

Sign in, open Activities, and use the import action to choose a .gpx file from your computer. Garmin Connect reads the points and adds the result to your activity list like anything recorded on a device directly.

From an iPhone

Find the .gpx file — in Files, in an email, or from the share action of the app that produced it — and try the share sheet first. Where Garmin Connect is not offered there, moving the file to a computer and using the website's import page gets the same result without needing the share sheet to cooperate.

Activity or course

This is the one decision actually worth pausing on. Importing as an activity treats the file as a thing you already did — it lands in your history with computed stats, next to everything a device recorded directly. Importing as a course treats the same file as a route to follow later — the point of a course is to load it onto a compatible Garmin device so it can guide you along that exact line another day. The GPX file itself does not care which one you pick; the geometry is identical either way. What changes is only where it ends up and what it is used for, so it is worth choosing on purpose rather than taking whichever option the import screen defaults to.

What Garmin Connect does with the file once it arrives

Garmin Connect recalculates rather than trusting a summary number baked into the file, because a GPX track carries the raw points, not a finished total. Distance comes from the recorded coordinates, and elevation gain can be corrected using Garmin Connect's own terrain data rather than the elevation values the file carried, which is why the climb total on Garmin Connect is not always identical to the number the recording app reported for the same walk.

Anything the GPX format has no field for does not travel with it either. Photos, video clips and voice notes captured during the original walk live outside the file, so an import brings the shape of the route across, not the moments recorded along it.

Things that go wrong, and why

• The import is rejected as empty — usually the file has too few points, for example a recording that stopped seconds after it started.
• The activity shows the wrong start time — GPX timestamps are UTC by convention, and Garmin Connect applies your account timezone on import, so a several-hour offset is a display setting, not a corrupted file.
• The walk landed as a course instead of an activity, or the other way round — a matter of which import path was used rather than anything wrong with the file itself; the same GPX can be re-imported the other way.
• Nothing happens when the file is tapped on iPhone — check the extension is still .gpx. Some email clients rewrite attachments as .txt, which stops iOS from offering apps that handle the format.

Why the file is what actually moves

GPX exists so a route recorded in one app can have a second life in another, and bringing a hike from a recording app into Garmin Connect is an ordinary version of that. Keeping the GPX file as the thing that travels between them — rather than a screenshot of a summary screen or a number typed from memory — is what keeps the real shape of the walk intact once it lands somewhere else.

TrailCam records the route on an iPhone and exports it as GPX 1.1 or CSV, either for a single walk or the whole history at once, which is the file this entire process starts from. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.