Guide

How to export a FIT file from Garmin Connect

A .fit file is what your Garmin actually recorded — every sample of heart rate, power, cadence and position, plus the device's own metrics. Getting one out of Garmin Connect takes about thirty seconds once you know where the option hides, and this page covers the cases people get stuck on: the missing gear icon, the download that turns out to be a .zip, exporting your whole history, and pulling files straight off the watch. The Zwift side is at the end.

Export one activity from the Garmin Connect website

1. Sign in to Garmin Connect in a web browser.
2. Select Activities in the left-hand navigation, then All Activities.
3. Select the name of the activity you want.
4. Select the settings gear icon in the top-right corner.
5. Choose Export File — older versions of Connect call this Export Original.

The download begins immediately, and is normally a .zip with the .fit inside.

Take the original, not GPX or TCX

The same gear menu offers Export to TCX, Export to GPX, Export to Google Earth and Export Splits to CSV. Those are conversions: they keep a track and some summary numbers, and throw away a great deal else — power detail, device identity, and the proprietary fields behind Body Battery, Stamina and Training Effect. Anything that involves repairing, merging or re-uploading a ride needs the original file, so take Export File.

There's no gear icon — now what?

Three reasons this happens, in order of likelihood:

• You're in the phone app. The export lives on the website only. See the next section for doing it from a phone anyway.
• The activity wasn't recorded by a Garmin device. Manually entered activities, and ones pushed in by a third-party app, have no original device file for Connect to give back.
• You're looking at a list rather than the activity itself. The gear icon is on the individual activity page, top right — not on the All Activities list, which has its own, different Export CSV button that produces a summary spreadsheet, not FIT files.

Exporting from an iPhone or Android phone

Garmin's own export instructions are written for the website, and the activity export isn't in the mobile app. You can still do it on a phone — just not in the app:

1. Open connect.garmin.com in your phone's browser and sign in.
2. Ask for the desktop version of the site. In Safari, tap aA in the address bar and choose Request Desktop Website; in Chrome, use the ⋮ menu and tick Desktop site.
3. Open the activity and use the gear icon exactly as above.

The download is a .zip, or has no extension

Garmin wraps the original file in a zip archive, so what lands in your Downloads folder is a .zip rather than a .fit. Unzip it and the activity file is inside, usually named with the activity's ID.

Occasionally a browser saves the download with no extension at all. The file is still intact — rename it to end in .fit and it will open normally.

If you're here to combine two recordings, you can skip all of that: BikeSync takes Garmin's zip exactly as downloaded and pulls the .fit out itself.

Exporting every activity at once

For your whole history, Garmin has a separate bulk route:

1. Go to Garmin Account Data Management in a browser and sign in.
2. Select Export Your Data, then Request Data Export.
3. Wait for the email. Garmin says links usually arrive within 48 hours, though they can take up to 30 days.
4. In the archive, open DI_CONNECT, then DI-Connect-Fitness-Uploaded-Files (or DI-Connect-Uploaded-Files). The FIT files are in there.

Be warned that the file names in a bulk export don't line up neatly with the activity names in Connect, so finding one specific ride this way is slower than just exporting it individually. There's no way to select several activities on the website and download them together.

Straight off the watch or Edge over USB

You don't have to go through Connect at all. Plug the device into a computer with its charging cable; most Garmin watches and Edge units mount as a drive. The recordings are in Garmin/Activity (sometimes GARMIN/ACTIVITY), as .fit files named by date and time.

This is handy when a ride never synced, when Connect won't give you the file, or when you'd rather not upload the activity anywhere first. Copy the files off rather than moving them, and leave the device to sync normally afterwards.

Getting the file from Zwift

Zwift keeps a copy of every ride both on the device you rode with and on its servers. The route that works everywhere, including Apple TV:

1. Go to zwift.com/feed and sign in.
2. Select JUST ME.
3. Open the activity, select the cog icon, then DOWNLOAD FIT FILE.

If you'd rather take the local copy — and for anyone whose Activities folder looks empty, because Zwift changed where it saves files on PC in February 2026 — see where Zwift saves your .fit files for every platform's path.

Now you have both files

The usual reason for exporting both a Garmin recording and a Zwift ride of the same session is that each holds half the story: the watch has heart rate, Body Battery, Stamina and laps, while Zwift has power, cadence, distance, elevation and the virtual route. Merging them gives you one complete activity to upload instead of two partial ones — and saves the duplicate on Strava.