GPSBABEL(1)

📦
version 1.10.0 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 GPSBABEL(1) 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about the manual page for gpsbabel — that's section 1 of the manual, the user commands section, iykyk. she's a whole conversion icon and honestly? not enough people know about her.

✨ NAME ✨

gpsbabel — convert and manipulate waypoints, tracks, and routes between formats. that's it, that's the job, and she does it flawlessly 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

gpsbabel [-iofFxsh] [file...]

look at all those little letters. they're cute. they're also doing a LOT of work. let's get into it 🫶

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the vibe. gpsbabel converts waypoints, tracks, and routes from one format to another. that's the main character energy right there.

but wait, there's more — she also downloads and uploads waypoints, tracks, and routes to and from a GPS receiver (think the ones by Garmin and Magellan, periodt) that's connected by a serial or USB port. like she will literally talk to your hardware for you. obsessed.

and the lore? okay so basically every program that manipulates GPS data built its own little language and created a whole Tower of Babel situation, imposing it upon us all 😭. gpsbabel flattens that tower. she hands us back the ability to freely move our own waypoint data between the programs and the hardware we choose to use. our data, our rules. iconic behavior honestly 👑

she also contains extensive data manipulation abilities, which makes her super convenient for server-side processing, or as the backend for other tools. she's not just a pretty format converter, she's infrastructure. she's the friend who does everyone's hair before the party.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

gpsbabel accepts the following options and processes them in order from left to right. yes, order matters bestie, left to right, don't skip around. additional options are documented in the docbook help.

  • -i format — use format as the type of file to read. tell her what she's reading first 📖
  • -f name — use name as the filename to read. this is the actual file, the source, the origin story.
  • -o format — use format as the type of file to write. what's she becoming? choose.
  • -F name — use name as the filename to write. where does the glow-up get saved ✨
  • -x filter — invoke an internal filter on the data. she has filters, we love filters.
  • -s — generate short names for waypoints on output. keeping it concise, keeping it cute.
  • -h [format] — display help that is more exhaustive than this page. if format is given, provide help for only that format. so if you want the full tea on one specific format, just say the word.
🎀 lists of filters and formats are given in the doc at /usr/share/doc/gpsbabel/ — go read it, it's giving encyclopedia but make it useful.

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

(the website. go there. she's online and thriving 🌈)

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Robert Lipe et al.

okay that's the whole page bestie, hope you ate it up 💖 no cap, everything above is exactly as documented — GPSBabel, dated 02/03/2026, straight from the GPSBABEL(1) manual. mwah, go convert something 🦋✨

📦 where this page comes from