How to export a GPX file from Strava

Everything starts with the file. Here is how to get it, and the two places people get stuck.

On a desktop, it is two clicks

Open the activity on strava.com. Find the more menu — the three dots near the top right of the activity, next to the edit and share controls. Choose Export GPX.

The file lands in your downloads folder with a `.gpx` extension. That is it. There is no setting to change first, no format to pick, and no plan to upgrade.

On a phone, ask for the desktop site

The Strava app does not offer the export. This is not a bug you can work around inside the app, but the web version works fine on a phone: open strava.com in Safari or Chrome, log in, and request the desktop site. In Safari that is the aA menu in the address bar; in Chrome it is under the three dots. Then follow the desktop steps above.

If that sounds like more work than it is worth, connect the account instead — it skips the file entirely.

What is actually in the file

A GPX file is XML. Opened in a text editor it is a long list of points, each with a latitude, a longitude and a timestamp, and often an elevation. That is all a print needs: the shape comes from the coordinates, the numbers come from the metadata.

It also means the file is readable by anyone you send it to — including the first and last coordinate, which for most people is their home. That is worth knowing before you email it around, and it is why we trim a radius off both ends by default.

The one case where it fails

If the activity has no GPS, the export produces a file with no points in it. Treadmill runs, indoor trainer sessions, rowing machines and gym workouts all record plenty of data — time, heart rate, power, cadence — but none of it is position.

There is nothing to fix here. An indoor effort has no shape, and no service can draw one that is not there.

Somebody else's activity

Strava's own guide covers this: on another athlete's public activity there is a GPX download button at the top right of the map. What comes out is the route with the performance data stripped — the line, not their times. If they have set the activity to Only You, there is no button. Your own activities export from the more menu and keep everything.

Which file, and the other pages

Export GPX is the universal choice. The same menu has Export Original — the FIT your device made — and there is a hidden TCX export too; which to pick depends on where the file is going. A route (a plan, not a recording) exports from a different page: exporting a Strava route. For a whole history at once, use the bulk export. And if the button is missing or the file is empty, Strava export not working lists the four causes.

Then what

Bring the file to the configurator and it is drawn immediately, in your browser. Nothing is uploaded while you are choosing, and only the finished route travels with the order.