Tracks

A track is a recorded path — a sequence of GPS points connected as a line on the map. You get tracks three ways: record them live during a hike, import GPX files (from GaiaGPS, Strava, Garmin Connect, wikiloc.com, or anything else that exports GPX), or plan a new route by tapping points on the map.

Recording

Tap the red record dot at the top-left of the map. The dot expands into a live elapsed-time chip (00:12:43) and a red breadcrumb line starts drawing your trip on the map as new GPS fixes arrive.

While recording

Tap the timer chip for a menu:
- Pause — freezes the clock; new fixes stop being added to the breadcrumb until you tap Resume.
- Finish — saves the trip as a new Track, opens the track overlay so you can review stats + elevation profile immediately.
- Delete — throws away the current recording without saving.
The GPS foreground service is started for you when you begin a recording — you don’t need to toggle follow-me first.
Screen off? The app relaxes the GPS update cadence to save battery (≈10 s between fixes with screen off vs. 2 s with screen on). No action required — it flips automatically.

If system location is off

Tapping record when the Android system-wide location toggle is off shows a quick “System location is off — turn it on to record” message with a Settings shortcut. The recording doesn’t start.

If the app is killed mid-hike

If Android ever kills the app during an active recording (low-memory reclaim, force-stop, reboot), the breadcrumb collected up to that point is preserved. Re-open the app and the chip comes back showing elapsed time in a paused state — tap Resume to keep going, or Finish to save what you’ve got.

Activity type

Every recorded track starts tagged as Hiking. Open the track’s detail screen (Tracks → tap the row) and use the Activity picker to change it to Walking / Running / Cycling / Offroading / Paragliding / Water sports. Imported tracks have no activity tag by default; you can assign one the same way.

Cropping a recording

Got GPS-warmup noise at the start of your track? Forgot to tap Finish and the track now drags halfway to your car? Open the track detail screen and tap Crop Track:

A dialog opens with a mini-map preview of the full track and its elevation profile below.
Drag the two handles on the elevation chart to set the start and end of the range you want to keep. The mini-map updates live — the kept segment stays in the track’s colour, the parts you’re dropping fade to grey.
The Kept readout shows the resulting distance and point count.
Tap Crop to commit. A confirmation dialog spells out how many points will drop from each end. This cannot be undone — keep a GPX export if you’re worried.

Cropping also recomputes the track’s distance, bounding box, and elevation profile, so the top-of-screen stats reflect the trimmed track immediately.

Planning a track

If you want to scout a route before hiking it — tomorrow’s walk, a loop you saw on a paper map, a connector between two trails you know — you can sketch it directly on the map and save it as a Track.

Open menu → Tracks → tap the blue + FAB at the bottom-right (above the import-folder FAB). The app jumps to the map in planning mode:

The top bar changes to ✕ Plan track ✓ Save. A small chip below shows your live point count and total distance.
Tap anywhere on the map to drop a numbered teal vertex. Each tap extends the route to the next stop. The first tap places vertex 1 wherever you tap — planning starts empty, so you can pan to any area first and plan from there.
Long-press a vertex and drag to move it. Long-press the small dot between two vertices and drag to insert a new point on that leg.
Drag a vertex onto the trash icon at the top-right (just below the compass) to delete it. The line reconnects through the remaining neighbours. The trash glows red when a vertex is hovering over it.
Tap the chart icon on the right to open the elevation profile sheet. The app fetches elevations from Open-Meteo for samples taken every ~100 m along your route, then shows a chart with total ascent and descent. A long route is sampled coarser (capped at ~500 samples) so the fetch never balloons. Cancel and dismiss are both available while loading.
Tap ✓ Save in the top bar, name your route, confirm. The new Track lands in your Tracks list (sortable, exportable as GPX, can be compared against a future recording). The map fits the new track’s bbox automatically.

To bail out: tap ✕ or hit hardware-back. If you’ve placed any points, the app asks before discarding.

Importing

From a file

Open menu → Tracks → tap the blue folder icon FAB at the bottom-right. Pick one or more .gpx files from your phone’s storage (multi-select allowed). The app navigates you back to the map and auto-zooms to fit the imported tracks.

Someone sends you a .gpx file? Tap it in the chat / email / file manager → the system offers to open with ApexGPS → the app imports it automatically and takes you to the map.

What gets imported

Track lines (with elevation if the GPX has it).
Any waypoints embedded in the GPX file (each with its name, description, and symbol mapped to ApexGPS’s closest match).

Duplicate protection: if you re-import the same GPX, waypoints already at those coordinates aren’t added again. Track lines ARE imported again (they’re named the same, you can delete the duplicate manually).

Viewing a track on the map

Tap a track line on the map. A panel slides up from the bottom with:

Track name + distance.
Elevation profile — a little chart. Drag your finger across it to scrub along the track; a crosshair shows where on the map that point is.
Ascent / descent totals.
Edit button → opens the track detail screen.
Share button → exports the track as a .gpx file you can send to anyone.
Hide button → minimises the panel to a thin bar at the bottom (so you can keep working with the track selection without the panel covering the map).
Dismiss (swipe down) → closes the panel.

A full list of every track you’ve imported. Count in the title.

Filter

Tap the filter icon. Three options:

Visibility — All / Visible only / Hidden only. Tracks you’ve hidden via the visibility toggle still exist in the list but don’t draw on the map.
Color — 16-colour palette. Tap a colour chip to see only tracks of that colour.
Activity — seven chips (Hiking / Walking / Running / Cycling / Offroading / Paragliding / Water sports) plus a No activity chip for tracks you haven’t tagged yet. Combine with the others to isolate, say, only hiking tracks coloured blue.

Active filter turns the icon blue. Tap Any in any section to clear that section.

Sort

Tap the sort icon. Five keys, and re-tapping the active key flips the direction (the active row shows the directional name + ✓):

Newest first / Oldest first — by import / creation date (newest is the default).
By name → Name (A→Z) / Name (Z→A) — alphabetical.
Nearest first / Farthest first — closest centre-point to your current location. Uses your phone’s last-known GPS fix so it works even if you haven’t turned on GPS in ApexGPS this session. Shows “(no GPS)” if location permission is denied or there’s no cached fix.
By points → Most points / Fewest points — useful for picking out heavily-detailed tracks vs simple routes.
By activity → Activity (A→Z) / Activity (Z→A) — alphabetical by activity type. Tracks with no activity tag sink to the bottom in A→Z and float to the top in Z→A — chosen so “what activities have I tagged?” is the readable view.

Tapping a different key resets to that key’s natural direction (newest / A→Z / nearest / most / A→Z); re-tap to flip.

Search

Type into the search box to filter the list to tracks whose name contains your text.

Select multiple

Long-press a track → selection mode. Tick the ones you want, then:

Bulk colour change (palette icon) — set all selected to one colour.
Bulk show / hide (eye icons) — quickly control visibility.
Bulk share (share icon) — bundle every selected track into a single .gpx file and open the share dialog. See Share tracks & waypoints.
Bulk delete (trash icon, red) — with confirmation.
Select all — tick every track currently in the filtered view.

Per-track actions

Tap a track in the list → it opens the Track detail screen.

Name — tap the title in the top bar to rename.
Colour — tap to open colour picker.
Visibility — show / hide on the map.
Elevation profile — the same chart as the map overlay, but full-size. If the track was imported without per-point altitude (some GPX exporters strip it), the chart area shows a Tap to fetch from terrain card instead. One tap pulls altitudes from the same worldwide terrain model the waypoint and planning fetches use (~30 m accuracy, no account required); you’ll see an X / Y progress count and a Cancel button while it loads. When it finishes, the chart renders against the fetched values and a Save / Discard bar appears so you can preview the result and back out if it looks wrong.
Ascent / descent totals.
Point count — how many GPS samples make up this track.
Top-bar icons: share (export as GPX) and show on map (closes the detail and zooms the map to fit the track).
Action row below the chart — three buttons:
- Crop Track — open the cropping dialog (see Cropping a recording above).
- Optimize Track (N pts) — simplify the track by dropping redundant points. Useful for importing huge overly-detailed exports. The dialog asks for a target point count; on confirm the simplified track renders in the chart + stats panel beneath a small dialog summary (3214 → 500 points · 12.40 → 12.30 km). Save persists; Discard (or hardware-back) drops the preview without touching your track.
- Delete Track (red) — with confirmation.

Bulk optimize (for heavy libraries)

If you’ve imported many extremely dense tracks, the map can feel sluggish on older phones. Settings → Data → Optimize all tracks runs the same simplification across every track at once. There’s a count in the Settings UI so you know how many will be touched.

Deleting

Single: swipe / tap the trash icon on any track row, or use the Delete button on the detail screen.

Multiple: selection mode + bulk delete.

There’s no undo. Keep a backup if you’re nervous.