How to import a GPX file into Runkeeper
Runkeeper keeps its file import on the website rather than inside the iPhone or Android app, which is easy to miss if you go looking for it in the app first. Sign in at runkeeper.com in a desktop browser, and it is actually more capable there than a lot of comparable tools: a .gpx, .tcx or .fit file uploads directly, and you are not limited to doing it one hike at a time — up to a hundred files can go in together, as long as they are handed over the right way.
The short answer
Log in at runkeeper.com — not the phone app — and find the import page, where you can select .gpx, .tcx or Garmin .fit files straight from your computer. Choose a file, or several at once, and upload them. Each one becomes its own logged activity, with distance, duration and the route on the map filled in from the track, the same as an activity recorded directly in the app.
The batch limit is a hundred files in one go, and the files do not all need to be the same type — a folder with a mix of .gpx and .fit files in it can be uploaded together in a single pass.
Why the import lives on the website, not in the app
Picking several files out of a folder, or dragging a batch of them onto a page, is a desktop-browser interaction that a phone screen handles awkwardly at best. Account-level tools like file import tend to end up on the website version of a fitness platform for exactly that reason, with the phone app then just showing whatever the account already holds rather than offering its own separate upload screen.
What the file needs to have in it
Only a file with an actual GPS track imports cleanly — a series of points that each carry a position and a timestamp, not just a route drawn or planned on a map with no time attached. A hike, walk or ride recorded live by a phone has both by default, since time and position are the two things GPS recording captures as it goes. An indoor activity with no GPS at all, or a route sketched out in advance and never tracked, will not have enough in it to become a normal logged activity.
The wrinkle: individual files only, no zipped folders
The hundred-file batch limit is generous, but the uploader wants the files themselves, not a compressed folder holding them. A zip file of a season's worth of hikes will not unpack itself on the way in — it needs to be extracted first, so that the page sees a pile of .gpx and .fit files sitting loose rather than one .zip file it does not know what to do with. Skipping that step is the single most common reason a batch upload silently does nothing.
Where TrailCam fits in
A hike recorded in TrailCam exports as a GPX 1.1 file with a position, elevation and timestamp on every point — exactly the shape of file this import expects, and exactly what a batch of individual files needs to be built from. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.
Questions
- Can I import my whole hiking history into Runkeeper at once?
- Up to a point — the website takes up to a hundred .gpx, .tcx or .fit files in a single batch, mixed types included. They need to be handed over as individual files rather than one zipped folder, since the uploader does not unpack a zip on its own.
- Does Runkeeper only accept GPX files?
- No — .tcx and Garmin .fit files upload the same way, and a batch can mix all three file types together in one pass.
- Why won't a route I planned in advance import as a normal activity?
- Import needs a track with a timestamp on every point, which is what a route actually recorded live always has. A route that was only drawn or planned beforehand, with no time attached to its points, does not carry enough information to become a logged activity — the same limitation applies on most other platforms that accept a GPX upload.
Recording your own routes
TrailCam is an iPhone app that records your route with GPS, keeps video clips, photos and voice notes pinned to the spot where you took them, and exports the result as GPX 1.1 or CSV. It is free to download.