How to export GPX, KML, and GeoJSON (and why you should)

You spent time dropping pins, sketching routes, and building up a personal map of places that matter to you. That work deserves a backup — and more than that, it deserves to be yours. My Location stores everything locally in your browser, which is great for privacy, but it means an export file is your safety net if you ever switch devices, clear your browser, or want to open your places in another app. Here's why to export, which format fits your destination, and how to do it.

Why export your map data?

• Backup. Your data lives in your browser's local storage. If you clear site data, reinstall the browser, or switch computers, it is gone. An exported file is the only copy that survives those events.
• Move to another app or device. Maybe you want to navigate a route on a Garmin, explore your places in Google Earth, or hand a dataset to a colleague who uses QGIS. Export lets you take your work anywhere.
• Own your data. Platforms shut down, add paywalls, or lock your places behind an account. A standard file format keeps your data readable by dozens of tools — not just one.

Which format should you pick?

The short answer depends on where the file is going. See GPX, KML, and GeoJSON explained for a deeper look at what each contains.

• GPX — Best for GPS devices, fitness apps, and outdoor navigation. Use it for a Garmin, Strava, Komoot, or any dedicated GPS app. It is the universal language of waypoints and tracks.
• KML — Best for Google Earth and Google My Maps. Use it to visualize places in 3D terrain or share a styled map. It supports rich styling that GPX does not.
• GeoJSON — Best for developers, web maps, and GIS software. Clean, modern, and trivial to parse in Leaflet, Mapbox, QGIS, or your own code.

When in doubt, GPX is the safest general-purpose backup — it's supported almost everywhere.

How to export from My Location

• Open the map; your saved places and routes appear in the list.
• Use the Export option. Pick your format — GPX, KML, or GeoJSON.
• The file downloads to your device immediately. No account required, no upload to a server.

The file contains the information you saved: place names, notes, coordinates, and the geometry of any routes you sketched. Individual routes can also be exported on their own from the route's menu.

How to import a file back in

• Open the map.
• Use the Import option and select your GPX, KML, or GeoJSON file.
• Your places and routes appear on the map, ready to view or edit.

This also means you can bring in files from elsewhere — a GPX trail from a hiking site, a KML a friend sent, or a GeoJSON dataset you found online.

A simple backup habit

Because your data lives only in the browser, a quick export habit is worth it: export a GPX or GeoJSON file once a month, or any time you add a batch of new places, and drop it in your cloud storage. That file is your entire map history, small enough that dozens of them take almost no space.

If you use My Location across a laptop and a phone, exporting on one and importing on the other is also the current way to move saved places between them. You can even sketch a route on the web and export it as GPX to load onto a GPS watch — see how to sketch a route without an app.

Ready to export?

Your saved places are worth keeping. A single file download backs them up, moves them to any tool you choose, and makes sure they belong to you — not to a platform. Open the map, save a few places if you haven't already, and try an export.