GPX to KML Converter: Tracks & Waypoints for Google Earth

This GPX to KML converter turns the file your GPS watch, phone app or Garmin exported into a KML that opens in Google Earth, Google My Maps or any GIS. Drop the .gpx above and download the .kml. The file is read in your browser and never uploaded, which matters more with GPS data than with most files: a recorded track usually starts and ends at your front door.

What changes between GPX and KML

Both formats are XML and both store latitude, longitude and elevation, but they organise them differently. This is where each part of a GPX file ends up:

Google Earth or Google My Maps?

For Google Earth, tick Keep timestamps when your track has times. The converter then writes a gx:Track, and Earth's time slider can replay the walk or the drive point by point. For Google My Maps, leave it off. My Maps does not read gx:Track, so a timed track would simply be missing from the imported layer. A plain LineString works in My Maps, Earth, QGIS and everything else, which is why it is the default.

Altitude: clamp most tracks to the ground

Clamp to ground, the default, drapes the line over Google Earth's terrain while the elevation numbers stay in the file. That is the right choice for walks, rides and drives, because consumer GPS elevation can be tens of metres out: drawn at its recorded height, a hike floats above the hillside in one place and disappears into it in the next. Choose Absolute for flights, paragliding and drone logs, where height above sea level is the point of the track.

Worked example

Try an example loads a ten-point sketch of the Triund trail above McLeod Ganj. The summary reads 2 waypoints, 1 track and 12 points in total, with a length of 2.16 km, elevations from 2,130 to 2,842 m, and 2 h 6 min between the first and last timestamps. The first track point is written to the KML as 76.33302,32.25852,2130: longitude, then latitude, then elevation.

Several GPX files into one KML

Drop a week of rides or every day of a trek at once. Each file's waypoints and tracks keep their own names and all of them land in one KML, so Google Earth shows the whole trip as one document. Formats can be mixed: a GPX and a KML dropped together come out as a single file.

Files that need care

• A point with a missing or impossible latitude, such as 95°, is skipped and counted in a note above the download. Nothing is dropped silently.
• Empty track segments, which some apps leave behind when a recording is paused, are dropped and reported.
• GPX 1.0 files from older units are read the same way as GPX 1.1.
• A track logged once a second can hold 100,000 points. It converts in a few seconds. Above 50,000 points the live preview is skipped, but the download contains every point.

Going the other way? Use the KML to GPX converter. For a spreadsheet of the track points, use GPX to CSV, and to make a KML from typed coordinates, use coordinates to KML.