How to export your Polarsteps data (and what to do with it)

If you're thinking about leaving Polarsteps — or just want a local backup of trips you've already logged — the export feature is the place to start. Polarsteps will give you a .zip of your trip data, including photos, GPS trace, and stop information, on request.

This post walks you through exactly how to do it in 2026, what the export actually contains, what it's missing, and what your realistic options are for moving the data into another app.

Disclosure: this post lives on the venture out blog. venture out is a Polarsteps alternative — see our seven Polarsteps alternatives or the free options round-up if you're trying to pick a destination. We've kept the export instructions below honest and tool-agnostic.

TL;DR

1. Open Polarsteps on web (not mobile).
2. Profile → Settings → Privacy → Request data export.
3. Confirm via the email Polarsteps sends.
4. Wait 24–72 hours; you'll get a download link by email.
5. The download is a .zip containing your photos and JSON files per trip.

Why you might want the export

The three main reasons people request a Polarsteps export:

• Backup. You don't want all your trip memories living only in one company's database.
• Migration. You're moving to another travel journal app and want to bring your trips with you.
• Local archive. You want the photos and metadata as files on your laptop, separate from any app.

The export is the same in all three cases. What you do with the files afterwards differs.

Step by step: exporting your Polarsteps data

1. Open Polarsteps in a web browser

Polarsteps' data export lives on the web app, not the mobile app. Go to polarsteps.com and sign in.

The data download feature exists in the iOS / Android apps too in some versions, but the most reliable path in 2026 is the web.

2. Find Settings → Privacy

Click your avatar (top right) → Settings. In the left-hand sidebar, find Privacy.

The privacy page is where data-management controls live, including export, account deletion, and visibility settings.

3. Request data export

You'll see a section titled something like "Request a copy of your data" or "Export your data". Click the button.

Polarsteps sends a confirmation email to the address on the account. This is a security step — you have to click the link in the email before the export request actually starts. (If you don't see it within a few minutes, check spam.)

4. Wait for the email with the download link

Polarsteps doesn't generate the export immediately. The size of your archive depends on how many trips you've logged and how many photos are attached, and it can take from a few hours to a few days.

When it's ready, you'll get a second email with a download link. The link typically stays live for around 7 days, so download promptly.

5. Download and unzip

You'll get a .zip file. Save it somewhere persistent (a Dropbox or iCloud folder is a good idea — your laptop's Downloads folder is not). Unzip it.

What's actually in the export

The contents have varied across versions of Polarsteps but the 2026 export typically includes:

• One folder per trip, named with the trip's name and slug.
• A trip.json file per trip, containing trip-level metadata: name, start and end dates, description, statistics.
• A locations.json file (or similar) per trip, containing the stops — each stop's name, latitude, longitude, timestamp, and any text notes.
• A track.json or route.geojson file containing the GPS trace.
• A photos/ folder containing the original-resolution photos you uploaded, with filenames keyed to a photo ID.
• A photos.json (or similar) mapping photo IDs to which stop they belong to and what caption (if any) you wrote.
• An account-level profile.json with your account information.

The exact filenames vary. The shape is consistent: there's the trip, there are stops, there are photos, and there's enough JSON metadata to reconstruct the whole journal in principle.

What the export usually does not contain

Worth setting expectations honestly:

• The Travel Book PDFs aren't included. If you've ordered a printed book, that book's PDF lives separately and you'd need to ask Polarsteps support to send it.
• Comments and reactions from followers may not be in the export. Some versions include them; some don't.
• Live-tracking history beyond the stops you've explicitly added isn't usually exported in a human-friendly form (it'll be inside the GPS trace if at all).
• Imported photos' EXIF data is preserved on the photos themselves but isn't necessarily duplicated in the JSON.
• Future-trip drafts that you haven't published may or may not be included depending on Polarsteps' current export build.

Check what you've got the moment the download arrives, and re-request if something obviously material is missing.

What can you do with the export?

The honest answer is: less than you'd hope, today. The export is a complete backup but it's not a portable format that another app will import directly. Each option below has trade-offs.

Option 1 — keep it as a backup, do nothing else

Easiest, and a perfectly valid choice. Drop the unzipped folder into a long-term cloud folder (Dropbox / iCloud / Google Drive). The photos are full-resolution and the JSON is human-readable, so future-you can reconstruct any trip even years later.

If your goal is "I don't want my memories trapped in one company", you're done after this step.

Option 2 — extract just the photos

Most people's hardest-to-replace data is the photos themselves, full-resolution and chronologically organised. The photos/ folder in the export has them; the JSON tells you which stop each one belongs to.

A short bash or Python script can rename the photos to include the trip name and stop name (PembrokeshireDay1_CarewCastle_001.jpg), which is how most people prefer to keep them outside any app.

If you'd rather not script, even a manual drag-and-drop into year-based folders gets you most of the value.

Option 3 — manually recreate the trip in a new app

This is what people do when migrating. There's no Polarsteps-to-anything one-click importer in 2026 that we'd trust. The process:

1. Pick your destination app. See seven Polarsteps alternatives if you haven't chosen yet. The shortlist most people land on is Wanderlog, FindPenguins, venture out, or Day One depending on use case.
2. Open both apps side-by-side. The exported trip.json + locations.json on one side, the new app on the other.
3. Create the new trip. Title, dates, description copied across.
4. Add the stops in order. Each stop's name and coordinates from the JSON go into the search bar of the new app; the matching place gets pinned.
5. Upload the photos. Drag the matching photo (or photos) from the export's photos/ folder onto the stop.

It's tedious. A trip with 30 stops will take an evening. The upside is the trip arrives in the new app in a clean state — no broken imports, no missing fields, no duplicate stops to clean up later.

Option 4 — convert the GPS trace to a generic format

The track.json or route.geojson in the export is convertible to GPX or KML with free online tools (or ogr2ogr if you're handy with command-line GIS). Once you have GPX, you can load the trace into apps like Strava, Garmin Connect, or any general-purpose mapping tool.

This won't bring stops, photos, or text across — just the line of where you went. Useful for posterity, not for migrating a full journal.

A few migration tips we wish we'd known

• Don't try to recreate every trip. Most people have a long tail of trips they don't really care about anymore. Pick the five trips you'd actually be sad to lose; migrate those properly. The rest can live as the backup zip forever.
• The new app's free tier matters here. If you're moving 20 trips' worth of photos, an app with a strict free-tier photo limit will paywall you fast. Check the photo limits before you start — see our free Polarsteps alternative round-up for the genuinely-free options.
• Don't delete the Polarsteps account immediately. Keep it dormant for a few months after the migration in case you discover something missing from the export. You can always close it later.
• Re-export after the migration too. A second export taken right before you close the account captures anything you added since the first one.

FAQ

How long does the Polarsteps export take?

Anywhere from a few hours to 2–3 days. Larger archives (hundreds of trips, thousands of photos) take longer. If you haven't heard anything after 5 days, contact Polarsteps support.

Can I export just one trip instead of everything?

Not via the standard export — it's account-wide. You can manually save individual trips by opening the trip's web view, screenshotting or saving the map, and downloading each photo individually, but that's a workaround rather than a feature.

Is there a Polarsteps importer for any travel app?

Not in any reliable, one-click sense as of 2026. Some apps have experimented with CSV import via the GPS trace, but the stop-level metadata and photos always require manual re-creation. If a "one-click Polarsteps importer" appears for a particular destination app, it'll most likely be a script that automates step 3 above — useful, but not officially supported by Polarsteps themselves.

Will deleting my Polarsteps account delete the public version of my trips?

Yes — closing the account removes your public trip URLs from polarsteps.com. If you want those URLs to stop working, deletion is the path. If you want them to keep working long-term, leave the account in place. There is no halfway option.

What format are the photos exported as?

Original format and resolution that you uploaded — typically JPEG, occasionally HEIC if you uploaded straight from an iPhone. EXIF data including the original capture timestamp and (where present) the GPS coordinate is preserved on the file itself.

What about exporting from a deleted Polarsteps account?

You can't. Always export before you delete. Polarsteps' privacy controls let you request the export at any time while the account is active.

Where should I migrate to?

It depends on what you want. The matrix in our round-up of Polarsteps alternatives is the best starting point. For sharing real days out specifically, venture out (this app) is the most natural fit — every trip becomes a public web page anyone can open. For long-form social travel, FindPenguins. For private journaling, Day One. The honest list is in the alternatives post.