How to import a GPX file into WorkOutDoors

The short answer

Share the .gpx file to WorkOutDoors from the iOS share sheet — from the Files app, from an email attachment, or straight from the export action of whatever recorded the track — and it lands in WorkOutDoors' own list of routes. WorkOutDoors also has an import option inside the app itself that reads a .gpx file directly out of Files or iCloud Drive, which lands in the same place. Either way, the route is then ready to open on a map, follow live, and send to a paired Apple Watch.

Why WorkOutDoors treats an imported file as a route, not an activity

Strava, Garmin Connect and most fitness apps center on an activity feed — a scrollable history of walks you already took, each one a finished record with a map and a set of numbers attached. WorkOutDoors is built the other way around: its core feature is following a route while you walk it, with the planned line staying on screen, an elevation profile running underneath, and an alert if you wander off the line you imported. A GPX track you already recorded somewhere else is, from WorkOutDoors' point of view, just as useful as a route someone else planned — both are a line worth walking again, not a record of something already finished.

That framing is also why the import feeds straight into Apple Watch support. A route meant to be followed benefits from being on your wrist as much as in your pocket, so once a GPX file is imported it is available to load onto a paired Watch for the walk itself, not only to look back on afterwards on the phone.

Getting the file in

From the iPhone share sheet

A .gpx file sitting in Files, attached to an email, or handed over by the share sheet of the app that recorded it can be shared straight to WorkOutDoors without opening the app first. This is usually the fastest route when the file just arrived from somewhere else.

From inside WorkOutDoors

WorkOutDoors also has its own import option that reads a .gpx file directly from Files or iCloud Drive. Both routes land the track in the same place — WorkOutDoors' list of routes, ready to open on the map.

What actually lands, and what does not

A GPX track's points — position, elevation and, if present, a timestamp on each one — become the route line and the elevation profile WorkOutDoors draws for it. Waypoints in the file, if it has any, come in as separate named points along the route rather than part of the line itself. What does not come across is anything a GPX file was never built to hold: photos, video clips and voice notes recorded on the original walk are separate files with no field for them in GPX, so an imported route is the shape of the walk, not what was captured on it.

Things that trip people up

• Expecting the import to bring in an activity with a finished time and pace attached — a route imported this way is a line to follow, not a past record, even if the GPX file it came from was originally a recording of a real walk.
• Looking for the route in an activity history instead of the routes list — WorkOutDoors keeps the two separate on purpose, since one is about the past and the other about a walk that has not happened yet.
• Assuming photos or voice notes will show up somewhere in WorkOutDoors after the import — GPX has no field for embedded media, so none of that ever leaves the app that recorded it in the first place.
• Not realizing a route has to be sent to the Watch separately once it is imported — landing on the phone and being loaded onto a paired Watch are two different steps.

Where TrailCam fits in

A hike recorded in TrailCam exports as a GPX 1.1 file with position, elevation and a timestamp on every point — exactly what WorkOutDoors expects a route to be built from, whether the point is to walk the same trail again or hand a route to someone else planning to. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.