How to open a .HGT file online
From file to map in seconds.
Open your .HGT file
Drag it onto the box or click to choose it from your device. It opens on your computer.
See it on the map
Points, lines and areas from your .HGT file appear on an interactive map. Click any feature to read its details.
Read the stats
Check distance, elevation gain and loss, the bounding box and a height profile linked to the map.
What is a .HGT file?
The common language of GPS devices.
An HGT file is a raw binary tile of terrain elevation from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Each file covers a 1-degree-by-1-degree area of Earth and stores heights in meters as signed 16-bit integers. Open it with QGIS (free) or Global Mapper; convert to GeoTIFF with the GDAL command gdal_translate.
Programs that open .HGT files
| Full name | SRTM Height Data File |
|---|---|
| Developer | NASA / NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) |
| First released | 2003 (SRTM data publicly released by USGS/NASA) |
| Category | Maps & GIS |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
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Is my .HGT file uploaded anywhere?
No. Your .HGT file is read by your browser and never sent to us. Only the background map tiles are loaded from OpenStreetMap, which sees which map area you're looking at, not your data.
How is the elevation gain calculated?
We add up every climb between track points, ignoring tiny wiggles of less than 3 metres that come from GPS noise. That's close to what Strava and Garmin report; barometric devices may differ slightly.
How do I open a Shapefile?
A Shapefile is several files. Drop the whole .zip, or select the .shp, .dbf and .prj files together. With only the .shp you'll see the shapes but no attributes.
Can I convert GPX to KML or GeoJSON?
Use Export GeoJSON to save everything you see. GPX ↔ KML conversion is part of our upcoming converter.
My CSV has coordinates. Will it work?
Yes, if it has columns named like lat/latitude/y and lon/lng/longitude/x. Every row becomes a point with the other columns as properties.
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