How to import a GPX file into Google Earth

The short answer

Open Google Earth Pro on a computer, go to File, then Open, and pick the .gpx file. Google Earth reads the track straight in and draws it across the terrain. Dragging the file onto an open Google Earth Pro window works the same way, if that is quicker.

This only applies to Google Earth Pro, the standalone desktop application. It is free, but it is a separate download from the Google Earth that opens in a browser or on a phone.

Where the GPX file comes from in the first place

Google Earth has no way to know about a hike unless something hands it a file first, since it did not record the walk itself. Most GPS recording apps have an export or share action that writes the points logged during the walk — latitude, longitude, elevation and a timestamp for each — into a single .gpx file. TrailCam can export a single route, or an entire history at once, as GPX 1.1, which is the version Google Earth and most other mapping tools expect.

Getting it into Google Earth

Google Earth Pro on a computer

File, then Open, then choose the .gpx file, or drag it straight onto the globe. Google Earth Pro adds it as a new temporary place in the sidebar, and the track appears drawn over the actual terrain rather than a flat street map, which is the main reason to bring a hike here at all.

Why not the web or mobile version

Google Earth on the web and the Google Earth phone app are built around exploring the globe that already exists — flying to a place, looking at imagery, following a guided tour — not around bringing in a file of your own. Neither offers the kind of file import that Google Earth Pro does. If the goal is specifically to view an imported GPX track, Google Earth Pro on a computer is the version built for that.

Starting from an iPhone

If the file was exported on a phone, get it to a computer first — AirDrop, iCloud Drive, or emailing it to yourself all work, since a GPX file is just a small text file. Once it is sitting in a folder on the computer, opening it in Google Earth Pro is the same File, then Open step as any other file.

What actually lands in Google Earth

A track — an ordered, timestamped list of points tracing where someone actually walked — draws in as a coloured line laid over the terrain, with elevation available to view as a profile. That is the part of a GPX file Google Earth is genuinely good at showing, because it can tilt the view and let the line run over real hills rather than a flat projection.

What does not come across is anything the format has no field for. Photos, video clips and voice notes captured along the walk live outside the GPX file entirely, so an import brings the shape of the route across and nothing else. If those matter, treat the import as a view of the geometry, and keep the original recording as the actual record of the walk.

Things that trip people up

• The track imports but lies flat on the ground rather than following the terrain — check the altitude display mode for the track in the sidebar; Google Earth can be set to draw a line clamped to the ground instead of at its recorded elevation.
• Nothing happens when the file is opened — check the extension is still .gpx. Some email clients rewrite attachments as .txt, which stops Google Earth from recognising the file at all.
• The elevation profile looks different from what the recording app reported — Google Earth can draw elevation from its own terrain model rather than the values stored in the file, so a changed number after import reflects a different data source, not an error in either app.
• Only scattered points appear, not a connected line — this usually means the file held waypoints rather than a track. A single walk exported properly should come across as one continuous line.

Why bother with Google Earth at all

A flat map answers where a trail goes. Google Earth Pro answers what the ground actually looked like while it went there — the climb, the ridge, the valley the trail dropped into — because the imagery and the terrain are both real. Seeing a recorded hike laid over that, rather than as a line on a street map, is the reason to bring a GPX file here in particular rather than to a general-purpose viewer.

TrailCam records the route on an iPhone in the background 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.