Own your walks: GPX files and backups

After a few years, your walking app holds a lot: every hike, every Sunday stroll, the mountain you finally climbed. Most of us never think about where that lives, until we get a new phone, want to try another app, or hear that ours is shutting down. A little preparation now means you keep your walks, whatever happens to the app.

That preparation is two things: an export of each walk in an open format, and a backup kept somewhere other than your phone. Most of this article applies to any app. walker, the walk, hike and ride tracker I make for Android, does both, and a section near the end shows how.

What a GPX file is

GPX stands for GPS Exchange Format. It is a plain text file for GPS data: waypoints, routes and tracks. A track is what a recorded walk becomes: a list of points, each with its position, and usually its height and the time you were there.

GPX has been around since 2002, and it is an open standard: its description is public, so any app can read and write it. The format's page at TopoGrafix counts hundreds of programs and websites that use it.

In practice, a GPX file from one app opens in most other mapping and fitness apps. Because it is plain text, it opens on a computer too, without the app that made it.

Why an open format matters

A walk stored only inside an app belongs to that app's future. Two things can go wrong.

You want to switch

Maybe another app suits you better, or you move from one phone brand to another. If your history is locked in, you either stay or start again from zero.

The app goes away

This happens, even to popular apps. Under Armour shut down Endomondo on 31 December 2020. As Android Police reported, users could ask for a copy of their data until 31 March 2021, and some things, such as personal bests, training plans and photos, did not move to the company's other app.

A folder of GPX files on your own computer depends on no company. That is the whole point.

Getting your walks out of other apps

Many apps can export. The steps differ, so check your app's help pages. Two examples, taken from the companies' help pages.

Strava

Export works on the Strava website, not in the app, as Strava's help explains. For one activity, open it, and from the More menu (the three dots) choose Export GPX. For everything at once, go to Settings → My Account, choose Get Started under Download your account, then Request download. Strava emails you a link, which can take a few hours.

Garmin Connect

Garmin's support page has the steps. On the Garmin Connect website, choose Activities, then All Activities, and open the activity. Select the settings gear in the top right corner, then Export to GPX.

If you have years of walks, the bulk export is worth doing once a year, even if you are happy with your app.

A backup is not an export

An export and a backup do different jobs.

An export is one walk in an open format like GPX. It is for other apps and other people: to show a friend a route, to load a track onto a GPS device, to move to another app.

A backup is everything, in a form your app can read back in full: all your walks, steps, settings and records. It is for getting your app back as it was, on a new phone or after a lost one.

You want both. And a backup only helps if it is somewhere other than your phone. Keep it on a computer, a memory card, or a cloud drive you trust. That file has your location history in it, so protect it with a password or passphrase.

How walker does it

walker has no account and no server, and it opts out of Android's backup to Google Drive, so no copy of your walks leaves your phone unless you make one. The help page's backup section has the steps in brief.

Exporting a walk

Open an activity, choose Export GPX from its menu and say where the file goes. Share GPX sends the walk straight to another app through Android's share sheet, the menu of apps you can send something to. Before anything leaves, walker asks Share the whole track? and reminds you that the file has every position in it, and that the other app may upload it. walker can't read other apps' GPX files today, so if you come from another app, keep the export you made.

Backing up and restoring

In Backup & restore, enter a passphrase of at least 10 characters, twice, tap Back up and choose where to save the file. It contains everything walker keeps except the downloaded maps, encrypted with your passphrase. Nobody can open it without the passphrase, and that includes me, so a forgotten passphrase can't be recovered. Share backup sends that encrypted file to another app through the share sheet, such as a cloud drive or your email. walker hands the file over and can't see whether it arrived, so check that the copy is there.

On a new phone, choose the file under Restore and enter the passphrase. walker shows how many activities are in the backup and how many are new on this phone, then adds only what is missing. It never changes or deletes anything already there, so you can restore one backup twice, or combine backups from two phones, without duplicates. How the encryption and the restore work inside is in an app with no server. When your last backup is more than 30 days old, walker reminds you on the map. Settings → Backup reminder changes that.

Apps shut down or stop suiting you, and phones get replaced. A folder of GPX files, with a backup beside it, survives all of that. Before you share a walk anywhere, it is worth knowing what your walking app knows about you. The files themselves are yours: they open without the app that made them, and they go with you to the next phone.