Track

Track reads your workout logs — a run, a ride, a swim, even a glider flight — and lays them on a map with the numbers behind them, on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. A personal project written in Swift, it picked up where GPX Reader left off: the same idea, rebuilt for a newer set of devices and formats.

Any format, from anywhere

GPX Reader had spent years opening whatever a device saved; Track did the same in Swift, and cast the net wider. Alongside GPX, TCX, NMEA and LOC it now read FIT — the format modern fitness watches and head units write — and it could pull workouts straight out of Apple Health. Getting a file in was a matter of the share sheet: send it from Mail or a browser and it opened, while iCloud Drive kept everything together and within reach of the Mac.

More than a line on a map

This is where Track did more than draw the route on a map. An elevation profile ran the length of the track, and sliding a point along it surfaced the height there and whatever else the workout had recorded at that moment. A play function replayed the route from the start, so a run or a swim could be watched back as it happened — the small satisfaction of reliving a good one.

Built, then rebuilt

I have a habit of building the track viewer I want, then rebuilding it when the tools move on — GPX Reader in Objective-C, then Track in Swift a few years later. Track was the one that finally read everything I gave it, from a Garmin's FIT file to a workout sitting in Apple Health, whether I'd been running, on the bike, or up in a glider. It ran from 2019 to 2022: a small, personal app, the kind that invites you to email about a missing format — and means it.