RiderLogGPX for Motorcycle Riders: The No-Nonsense Guide
GPX is the file format of motorcycling's back roads. Someone's perfect Pyrenees route, the group ride plan, your own best Sunday loop: they all travel as .gpx files. Understanding the format takes five minutes and permanently frees your riding data from any single app. Here is the rider's version, no XML lecture.
What a GPX file contains
A GPX file holds one or more of three things. A track is a breadcrumb trail of points, something that was actually ridden and recorded. A route is a plan: an ordered list of points to ride in the future. Waypoints are single markers, like a viewpoint, fuel stop, or that café that is closed on Mondays. Recording apps produce tracks; planning apps mostly consume routes; both usually accept either.
Where riders get GPX files
- Route libraries in planning apps (Scenic, Calimoto, Kurviger all export)
- Forum threads and club sites, where the region's classics circulate for years
- Friends: the "here's Sunday's plan" file in the group chat
- Your own history, if your recording app exports it, which is the part most riders overlook
The lock-in problem
Years of recorded rides inside an app that cannot export them is data held hostage: change apps or lose your history. Before committing to any tracker, check two things: does it export GPX per ride, and where does the data live. Server-only storage plus no export is the worst combination; when the service sunsets, your riding history goes with it.
In RiderLog
RiderLog does GPX both ways: import tracks and routes you have collected, export any ride you have recorded. Storage is local-first, on your phone, so your history is yours even if you never open the app again. No lock-in is a feature, not a slogan.
Practical moves worth knowing
- Back up the season. Export your best rides once a season and drop them in cloud storage. Ten minutes, permanent archive.
- Share the loop, not the essay. A GPX file answers "where exactly did you go?" better than any description.
- Import before the tour. Collect the region's classic routes ahead of a trip; ride them, and your recorded versions join your log.
Your rides, portable forever
RiderLog imports the GPX you collect and exports every ride you record. Local-first storage, no lock-in, no hostage data.
Free to download. Your rides stay on your phone.