How to import a GPX file into TrailCam

The short answer

A .gpx file can be handed to TrailCam through the iPhone share sheet — from Files, from Mail, or straight out of the app that produced it — or brought in through an import option inside TrailCam itself. Either way, the track appears in your history as a route: a line built from the points the file contains, with distance, duration, pace and elevation gain worked out from those same points, the same way they are for a route TrailCam records on its own.

Getting the file in

From the iPhone share sheet

If the .gpx file is already sitting in Files, attached to an email, or was just produced by another app's own export action, sharing it to TrailCam through the iOS share sheet is usually the shortest path — it hands the file straight to the app without a detour through Files first.

From inside TrailCam

TrailCam also has its own import option that reads a .gpx file directly from Files or iCloud Drive, for a file that is already saved on the phone rather than arriving fresh from somewhere else. Either route lands the track in the same place: your route history, alongside everything TrailCam recorded on its own.

What actually lands, and what does not

A GPX track is a sequence of points, and the points are what comes across: latitude, longitude, and — if the file has them — elevation and a timestamp for each one. From that sequence, TrailCam works out the same figures it works out for any route: distance by summing the path between consecutive points, elevation gain by summing the upward differences in altitude, moving time and pace from however the timestamps space out. None of those numbers were stored in the file; they are computed after import, exactly as they would be after recording.

What does not come across is anything the GPX format was never built to hold. A photo, a video clip or a voice note pinned to a hike lives outside the coordinate list entirely, so a file that only ever contained points has nothing of that kind to bring with it — the imported route is the line, not the walk that produced it. The activity type travels only as far as the file itself carries one: GPX has an optional field for it, and whether an imported hike shows up labelled as hiking, cycling or something else depends on whether the app that wrote the file filled that field in with wording TrailCam recognises. And if the original file never recorded an elevation for its points, there is no altitude data for TrailCam to compute a climb from — a gap in the source file, not something the import can invent.

Why bring an old file in at all

The usual reason is that a hiking history is scattered before it ever reaches TrailCam. Someone who used a different app for years and kept the GPX exports has a folder of routes with nowhere to replay them; importing puts those old hikes on the same map, with the same elevation profile underneath, as everything recorded since. A route someone else recorded and sent over as a file — a hike done together where only one phone was tracking — can be brought in the same way, so both people end up with a copy to look back on. And a file pulled off an old phone or an app that no longer exists is otherwise just a text file sitting in storage; importing it is what turns it back into something you can look at on a map again.

Things that trip people up

• Expecting photos or video from the original hike to appear after import — they never lived inside the GPX file, so there is nothing for the import to carry over.
• Assuming the activity type will come across correctly — it only will if the file that produced it wrote one, in wording TrailCam can match; a blank or unrecognised field just means there is no label to import.
• Being surprised an imported route shows no elevation gain at all — that means the source file never recorded an altitude for its points, not that the import missed something that was there.
• Expecting distance or pace after import to match exactly what the original app showed — both are recalculated from the points on this side, the same as opening any GPX file in a second program, so small differences are normal rather than a sign the file imported incorrectly.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam records a route with GPS on an iPhone and can bring an existing GPX file back in as well as export one — a single route or your whole history, as GPX 1.1 or CSV. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.