GPX ViewHow to open a GPX file
Double-clicking a GPX usually does nothing: neither Windows, macOS, Android nor iOS can display the format unaided. Here is what works, device by device, starting with the fastest.
The fastest route: a browser
Nothing needs installing to look at a track: a browser is enough, provided a page knows how to read the file. The viewer on this site does it inside the tab, with no account and without sending the file anywhere. It is the way to go when you want to know what you have been given, or to check that a file you received is not empty.
Why your system offers nothing
A GPX is associated with no software by default. The system recognises the extension as a file without knowing what to do with it — hence the "choose an application" that leads nowhere when no installed app has claimed it. This is not the sign of a damaged file: it is an exchange format nobody has claimed on your machine.
Opening a track where the signal stops
A browser does not walk into a valley with no coverage: a page has to be loaded to appear. To open a track at a trailhead, follow it along the way and find it again the next morning, you need an app that keeps the file and its map on the device. That is exactly what GPX View does.
If the file refuses to open
Four causes cover nearly every case. The file is really an archive — a KMZ or a ZIP — and has to be extracted first. It was saved from a browser as a web page rather than as a file, and holds nothing but HTML. It was truncated in transit, which shows in a text editor: an incomplete GPX stops mid-line. Or it carries waypoints only, with no line at all — there is then nothing to draw, and the reader is right to say so.
Device by device
- On a computer
- The browser is the shortest way, and it is the same on Windows, macOS and Linux: drop the file into a page that can read it. Desktop mapping software opens GPX files too, but installing one to look at a single file is out of proportion.
- On Android
- The file manager sees the GPX but shows nothing of it. Two ways: open it from a mapping app already installed, or go through the phone's browser, which accepts the file from the picker just as a computer does.
- On iPhone and iPad
- The file arrives in the Files app or as an attachment, and the iOS preview shows nothing of it either. The share button offers the apps able to read it, provided at least one is installed — failing which, again, the browser will do.
- On a hiking or cycling GPS
- The device does not display the file: it imports it. You have to place it in the folder it expects, usually over a cable, then load it from the courses menu. That is a transfer more than an opening, and it has pitfalls of its own.
- In Google Earth
- The version installed on a computer imports GPX files directly; the one that runs in a browser reads only KML and KMZ, which means converting first.
Open your file now
The viewer on this site displays a GPX or TCX dropped into the page: the line on a topographic map, the distance, the ascent, the elevation profile and the file's waypoints. Everything is computed in the tab — nothing is uploaded, and closing the page leaves nothing behind.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need to install anything to open a GPX?
- No, if you only want to look at it: a browser is enough. Yes, if you want to take it where there is no signal, since a web page has to be loaded to appear.
- My GPX opens in a text editor — is that normal?
- Yes. A GPX is tagged text, and an editor shows its raw contents. It is even useful for checking that a file is not truncated — but there will be no map.
- What about TCX files?
- They open the same way and need no conversion beforehand: the viewer on this site and the app both read the two formats.
- Can an attachment be opened without saving it?
- Rarely, and it is the shortest path to a failure. Save the file first, then drop it into a page or an app: many mail clients show only an inert preview, when they do not rename the attachment along the way.