How to Export Your Data From a Fitness App, and What Comes Out
Where the export setting usually hides, what the law says you are owed, which file types come out and what each can carry, and the numbers that almost always stay behind.
The answer to how to export your data from a fitness app is nearly always a setting called "download your data", "export" or "request an archive", tucked into the account or privacy page. What you get back is a file or a zipped folder, not something another app can open straight away. Which file type matters more than people expect: a spreadsheet of every set is easy to move, while a folder of watch files is complete but unreadable without the right software. And the numbers the app worked out for you, the scores and estimates and trends, usually stay behind.
What are you actually entitled to?
If you live in the UK or the EU, the law gives you a right to a copy of the data you handed an app, in a form another service can read. The UK regulator's guidance on the right to data portability sets out when it applies. It covers data an app holds because you agreed to it or signed up for a service, stored on a computer rather than on paper, and only what you provided. Whatever comes back has to be structured, commonly used and readable by a machine; spreadsheet-style .csv files and two common structured text formats are the examples given. A company has a month to reply, which can stretch by two more if the request is complicated, and in most cases it cannot charge you.
Read the third condition carefully, because it is where expectations go wrong. Data you provided means the workouts you typed in, the meals you logged, the weights you entered, and the readings your watch recorded on your behalf. It does not include what the company built from them. An estimate of your best single lift, a fitness score, a recovery number, a weekly target: those were created by the app, and the portability right does not reach them.
There is a separate, wider right to see everything a company holds about you, including what it has inferred. That gets you a copy. It does not promise a file another app can load.
Outside the UK and EU the rules differ by country, and plenty of apps offer an export anyway because people ask for it. Check the app's help pages before assuming either way.
Where the export button usually lives
Almost never on the main screen. The usual places are a settings page called Account, Privacy or Data, often only on the website rather than in the phone app.
Strava is a typical example. Its own help page says exporting is only available on the website: you go to Settings, then My Account, choose Get Started under "Download your account", then Request download. The archive arrives as a link by email, and Strava warns it can take a few hours.
That shape is common. You ask, the company builds a zipped folder in the background, and an email arrives later. Two practical consequences follow. The export goes to the email address on the account, so if that is an old address you no longer read, fix it first. And the link often expires after a while, so download it when it lands.
Garmin works the same way for a full account export, and the guide to getting Garmin data into another app walks through what that archive holds compared with the faster sync routes.
Which file you get, and what each one can carry
The file type decides what you can do next, so it is worth recognising them by their endings.
| File ending | What it is | Good for | What it loses or hides |
|---|---|---|---|
| .csv | A plain spreadsheet: rows and columns of text | Lifting logs, food logs, body weight. Opens in any spreadsheet program | Anything that is not a row: routes, second-by-second heart rate, photos |
| .fit | A compact file written by watches and bike computers | The fullest record of a single run, ride or swim | Nothing about the session, but you cannot read it without software |
| .gpx | An open text format for map points with times | Routes and distances, readable by almost every mapping or running app | The basic format has no place for heart rate or power |
| .tcx | An older text format for training sessions | Runs and rides with heart rate, laps and distance | Less detail than .fit |
| .json | Structured text, the shape apps use internally | Complete account archives | Readable in a text editor but not friendly, and every app lays it out its own way |
The .fit file deserves its own note, because it is what most watches actually produce. Garmin describes it as a binary format built for sport and health data, which is a way of saying it is compact and precise and looks like noise if you open it in a text editor. It holds every heart-rate sample, every lap, every pause. If an archive gives you a choice, keep the .fit files even when you also want something easier to read. You can always turn a complete file into a simpler one later. You cannot go the other way.
A .gpx file is the opposite trade. Nearly everything can read it, but the core format was designed for map points and times, so heart rate only survives if the app that wrote it added it as an extra and the app reading it knows to look.
What usually stays behind
Run through these before deleting an old account, because each one is a common surprise.
- Anything the app calculated. Training scores, estimated best lifts, recovery numbers and trend lines. The raw sets and sessions come out; the app's reading of them does not. A new app will rebuild its own version from the raw history, and it will not match the old one, because it is a different calculation.
- The food database behind your meals. Many food apps export a row per day with totals, or a row per entry with the calories and protein as logged. The link back to the app's food entries, and any custom foods or recipes you built, often comes out as a separate file or not at all.
- Exercise names, in a form another app understands. One app's "Bench Press (Barbell)" is another's "Barbell Bench Press". A spreadsheet export keeps the name exactly as the old app spelled it, and an importer has to match each one. Expect a list of exercises it could not place.
- Photos and notes. Progress photos are often a separate download, or are left out of the main archive entirely.
- Social data. Comments, likes and other people's activities you appear in may be left out, since they are partly someone else's.
The calculated numbers are the one people miss most. If a chart of your estimated best lift over three years matters to you, take a screenshot before you leave. The export will give you every set that chart was built from, but not the chart.
Exporting is not the same as syncing
On Android, Health Connect lets apps read and write a shared pool of health data on your phone, so a new app can pick up recent workouts and weight entries without you exporting anything. It is useful, and it is not an export. It holds what apps have put into it, it looks back only so far, and it carries only the kinds of data it has categories for. A spreadsheet of three years of sets from a lifting app is not something it can hold. The explainer on what Health Connect does and does not do covers its limits in detail.
The practical rule: sync for what happens from now on, export for what already happened.
Check the file before you close anything
An export that looks complete and is not is worse than no export, because you only find out after the old account is gone. Ten minutes of checking covers most of it.
Open the spreadsheet files and sort by date. The oldest row should be roughly when you started using the app. If your first workout was in 2021 and the file starts last year, something was cut off. Then pick one session you remember clearly, find it in the file, and check the weights and reps against your memory. Look at the units too. A column of weights with no label might be kilos or pounds, and an importer that guesses wrong will either halve or more than double your history.
Dates are the other quiet trap. Some apps write 03/04/2025 meaning the third of April, some mean the fourth of March, and a spreadsheet will silently pick one. Check a date late in a month, like the 25th, where only one reading makes sense.
For watch files, open two or three in any app that reads them and confirm the map, the distance and the heart-rate line all appear. If they do for a few, they almost always do for the rest.
The honest limit
An export is a copy of your data on the day you asked for it. It does not keep updating, and nothing guarantees the next app can import it: an app can accept .fit files from watches and still have no way to read another app's lifting spreadsheet. Before you rely on a move, check what the receiving app says it imports, and keep the original archive somewhere safe either way. It is the only complete version of your history that does not depend on any company still being around. If where your data lives is part of why you are moving, the page on how a private fitness app handles your data sets out what to look for.
Adonae reads Health Connect, Intervals.icu and Fitbit, and collapses the duplicate sessions that arrive when more than one of them is on. Get it for Android.
