software-recommendations – Seeking Mac and Web Application for Editing and Displaying GPX Files

gps-track-editorgpxmacsoftware-recommendations

Recently I made month-long cycling trip through Europe. I have some gpx files of existing routes (like Eurovelo) which I used for planning. I also have ~30 gpx files of daily recordings of my route which I downloaded from Sportstracker.

I would like to organize those tracks (to e.g. remove unnecessary pieces, manually add routes where my gps was not working, merge them, etc.) and then add to map, so that I can explore (and screenshot) the maps of planned/actual route in various zooms, details, etc.

I started with https://mymaps.google.com/ which I have used before, but it has some limitations:

  • only allows some number of gpx layers (like 10 or so)
  • does not allow route editing
  • does not load my gpx files from Sportstracker (they look like valid xml to me)

None of the apps/webs I have found seem to do what I need (e.g. no editing, or just single file, etc).

Do you have any suggestions?

Best Answer

I ended up using QGIS (as suggested by the comments) which turned out to be a perfect solution (though it has a bit of learning curve). Here are some hints:

  1. Adding base-map from major providers is easy - described e.g. in this question If the bitmap is distorted, make sure to set the project's Coordinate Reference System (in bottom right corner) to EPSG:3857 which seems to be standard for all online map services
  2. Adding gpx files to map is basically drag&drop (various tutorials online, e.g. this video). By default, it will show both the tracks and track_points - hide the track_points to get just the solid line.
  3. In Layer Properties / Symbology you can change how lines are rendered. When applying some style this seems to just copy values, so if the style is changed later, it does not update the properties. But you can edit multiple in bulk.
  4. There is Import Photos plugin which makes it relatively easy to put entire directories of geo-tagged photos on the map as icons.
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