How to import a GPX file into Wikiloc

The short answer

On the Wikiloc website, sign in and look for the upload option near the top of the page, commonly labelled something like "Upload" or "Add a trail," then choose the .gpx file from your computer. Wikiloc reads the points and builds a trail from them, with distance, elevation and duration calculated from the file.

On iPhone, the more direct route is usually the other way round: open the app that recorded the walk, use its own share or export action, and pick Wikiloc from the row of apps iOS offers, if it is installed. That hands the file over without a browser involved at all.

Where the GPX file comes from in the first place

Wikiloc only has a trail that was either recorded with its own app or handed to it as a file from somewhere else. Most recording apps have an export or share action that writes the points logged — coordinates, elevation and usually a timestamp — into a single .gpx file. TrailCam can export a single route or an entire history this way, in GPX 1.1, the version Wikiloc and most other trail and mapping services expect.

Public by default is the thing worth checking

Wikiloc's purpose is a shared library other hikers can search, not a private record for one person, so an upload commonly defaults to visible to everyone rather than kept private. That is a different starting point from a service built purely around a personal log. Before finishing an upload, it is worth finding the trail's visibility setting and deciding deliberately, rather than assuming it stayed just yours.

The same applies to whatever details Wikiloc asks for alongside the file — an activity type, a title, sometimes a difficulty rating. None of that lives inside the GPX itself; the file only carries the route's coordinates, so anything Wikiloc shows beyond the line on the map was added at the point of upload, either by you or by Wikiloc's own defaults.

Things that go wrong, and why

• The upload is rejected as empty — usually the file has too few points, for example a recording that stopped seconds after it started.
• Elevation looks different from the app that recorded it — Wikiloc can recalculate climb from its own terrain data rather than the elevation values inside the file, so a different total is not a sign either number is wrong.
• The trail ends up visible to other users when a private record was wanted — check the visibility setting at the point of upload rather than after the fact.
• 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 in the share sheet.

Why the file is what actually moves

GPX exists so a route recorded in one app can have a working life somewhere else, and bringing a hike from a recording app into a trail-sharing site like Wikiloc is an ordinary case of that. The file carries the shape of the walk — coordinates, elevation, time — and nothing the format has no field for travels with it: photos, video clips and voice notes captured along the original route stay outside the file.

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.