How to import a GPX file into the Suunto app

The short answer

Open the Suunto app, go to the Map view, and tap the plus icon on the map screen. Choose "Import route (.gpx)," then browse to the file — on an iPhone this means searching Files or wherever the .gpx file was saved, on Android it usually means Downloads or another folder on the device. Once it is selected, the app lets you review the route, give it a name, and save it to your library.

The steps are the same on both platforms in substance; only the file browser you are handed differs.

Where the GPX file comes from in the first place

The Suunto app only has a route once some other app hands it one as a file — it does not itself record a hike the way a phone-based GPS tracker does. Most recording apps write the points they logged, latitude, longitude, elevation and a timestamp for each, into a single .gpx file through an export or share action. TrailCam exports a single route or a whole history this way, in GPX 1.1, which is a version Suunto and most other GPS tools read without complaint.

What a route becomes once it is imported

This is the part worth pausing on. An imported GPX file lands in the Suunto app as a route — something built to be followed, with a line on the map you can navigate along — rather than as an entry in a log of hikes you have already completed. That is a real difference from how Strava or Garmin Connect would treat the same file, where an import usually appears as a finished activity by default. Neither behaviour is a mistake; they answer different questions. A route asks "where do I want to go," and an activity log asks "where did I already go."

For anyone recording with TrailCam on an iPhone and then heading out with a Suunto watch, this is the useful part: a route saved to the Suunto app library this way can be sent to a paired watch for on-wrist navigation, so a hike recorded once can be walked again with turn-by-turn guidance rather than re-planned from scratch.

What does not come along for the ride

GPX carries coordinates, elevation and time — nothing else. Photos, video clips and voice notes recorded along the original walk are separate files with no field for them in the format, so an import brings the shape of the route across, not the moments captured on it. If those matter, the original recording stays the master copy; the GPX file traveling to the Suunto app is a copy of the geometry alone.

Things that trip people up

• Looking for the import in a workout history and not finding it — it lands under routes, not activities, since the Suunto app treats an imported GPX as something to follow rather than something already done.
• Nothing happens when the file is tapped on an iPhone — check the extension is still .gpx. Some email clients rewrite attachments as .txt, which stops iOS from offering apps that handle the format at all.
• A long, multi-day recording imports as more than one route instead of a single continuous line — this usually traces back to the original GPX file having multiple track segments, often from the recording being paused and resumed along the way.
• Expecting the imported route to carry the photos or voice notes captured on the original walk — it will not, since GPX has no field for embedded media of any kind.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam records a hike, walk or ride on an iPhone as a continuous GPS track, and exports it as GPX 1.1 — a single route or the whole history at once — or as a CSV summary. That GPX file is what the Suunto app is built to take in as a route, for anyone whose recording and navigation happen on two different devices. The app itself already reports distance, moving time, pace and elevation gain, and replays the route with any photos, clips and voice notes pinned along it. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.