If your Zwifting is interrupted by a power outage, computer reboot, or Internet problems you may “lose” your current ride without being able to save it properly.
Sometimes everything may seem to be working fine, but after your session, the saved ride never shows up on Strava and signing into Zwift.com shows your ride as a “partial ride.” This indicates Internet connection issues at some point in your ride which prevented your device from sending data to Zwift’s servers.
Take heart–all is not lost! Zwift saves your activities on your device as well as sending the data to Zwift.com. No matter what happens with that Zwift.com connection, you can always retrieve your local file and upload it to Strava or any other service.
Note: at this time you cannot upload the file from your computer to Zwift.com to get full “credit” for your ride within Zwift – meaning the ride in question will probably show as a “partial” on Zwift.com forever.
Retrieve Your Activity on Zwift for PC/Mac
Each of your rides is saved on your computer at %USER%\Documents\Zwift\Activities\ as an industry-standard .fit file. Just find the ride in question (files are named by ride date) and upload it to Strava or any other service.
Retrieve Your Activity on Zwift for iOS and Android
There’s a hidden feature on Zwift for iOS and Android which lets you easily access your list of ride files and attach them to an email. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Tap the ZWIFT logo 3x Step 2: select your ride from the list and click “OK” Step 3: send the email! (Don’t send it to me–send it to yourself!)
Once you have the file in your email, save it to your system and upload it to Strava.
Retrieve Your Activity on Zwift for AppleTV
Unfortunately, there is no way to access the local .fit file Zwift creates on your AppleTV if something goes wrong. If you find you’ve finished and saved your Zwift ride and it’s not showing up on Strava, it’s possible the upload failed even though the activity saved on Zwift’s side. Try visiting my.zwift.com to download the ride file, which you can then upload to Strava.
Fix Uploading Errors with FitFileTools.com
If you get an error when attempting to upload your .fit file to Strava or another service, the file is corrupted in some way. In that case, head over to fitfiletools.com and fix it using their tools. (Hint: the “Corrupt Time Fixer” is often the solution.)
Wrapping It Up
It can be a real bummer to finish a Zwift ride only to realize it didn’t save properly. Happily, following the simple steps above will let you post your ride to Strava or other services. As we know… if it isn’t on Strava, it didn’t happen!
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
I have completed group rides on Zwift At the end of the ride sometimes there is the option to continue or to change to Zwift’s course for that day. If you change to the Zwift course the distance is not accumulated into your total distance. You can see the ride in activity but it is not accumulated. Zwift has told me this is a known problem. However it is annoying given Zwift is based on milage to Level Up. When will they correct this problem? I know I can upload to Strava etc. However that is a very poor option… Read more »
The exact same thing happend to me a couple of times until I read your post. Finally i know why. THANKS. Always thought it had something to do with the internet connection. Did you find a way to save the distance or is it gone forever and ever? 🙁
It should really be that hard for Zwift to fix this issue????
also all the badges that I take the next time are not there again ..</span>
Super helpful post! Thanks! Unfortunately didn’t work for me. Im missing 10 min and a couple extra miles on mine. When I opened Zwift again three hours later bc I didn’t see it post to Strava, it said there was an error and asked if I wanted to save it. I clicked yes but it only saved part of my ride. Super bummed.
Helpful and in-detail post, however, it didn’t work for me entirely. I lost 10 minutes of my ride… 🙁
Thanks for sharing how to upload to 3rd party apps. Is there any way to upload the .fit file to zwift.com itself, or force the device (ipad in my case) to reupload past rides that failed in the first place so we can get the level-ups that would’ve been rewarded otherwise.
Nope. Can’t upload to zwift.com.
Brilliant thanks! Thought I’d lost a ride, followed your simple steps and hey presto it’s all loaded. It’s on Strava so it happened! 👍
Hi missing some rides to garmin and strava have found fit but its asking me to open with – so what do i do ? Thanks i have a windows 10 pc and garmin 520 ant+
Companion App not showing Zwift activities:
I’m doing a training program (8 weeks in) and the last 3-4 workouts are not being saved to Companion. I click “Save” as I’ve always done, yet the workout does not show up on Companion under Activities. I took your advice to email myself the file, but they aren’t even listed there. So, it’s as if I’m clicking the trash icon when i finish my ride. Can you help troubleshoot? I’ve removed the Companion app from my phone and reinstalled as well as the Zwift program from my PC.
This is great, but has happened to me 3 times with absolutely no reason for it. No internet shortage, power or anything like that, just has not saved properly, and when I’ve gone to save to TP, it’s not recorded the full thing. Insanely frustrating
Well, there’s certainly a reason for it. We just don’t know what it is! My guess is it’s internet connectivity issues. Possibly sending your log file to Zwift support would help you get sorted.
Raced up the Alpe today, lost connectivity part way through but kept at it and finished the ride despite no riders on course. Followed the steps 1 and 2 to retrieve activity on IOS but after selecting the file and clicking OK, I don’t get the email screen – just takes me back to main zwift user select screen. Any tips?
Thank you Eric, I followed you PC instructions and it worked! 👍
I did a ride in Richmond, I stopped two miles, got disconnected and then reconnected and Zwift asked if I wanted to start up…I said yes but only 2 miles of ride recorded – even in .FIT file although on Zwift it has the entire ride. Trying to migrate to Strava. Not the end of world… but?
How an I get back to my training progress?
Thank you for this great post.
I rode yesterday and when end my ride and time to save it never did it so it does seem to show in my activities on Zwift but it seems incomplete and did not upload it to Strava. Then I found this post but I have 3 .FIT files for my ride yesterday (same date but with 3 different time stamps) which one is the correct to upload to download and upload to Strava ?
Not sure! One thing you can do is look at the SIZE of the files. Perhaps the longest one is your main ride? You can also try just uploading all three to Strava, then deleting any you don’t want afterward.
Same problem here. I tried uploading all 3 files and did not work “corrupt file”. I also tried to fix it with fit file tools but when uploading to strava it says “empty”. Apparently it didn´t happend.
Great! Just recovered a 70 minute ride lost when laptop battery ran out 🙂
I have found the fit file but which one is my file ?
i downloaded activity from zwift in .txt format, but strava alows other formats how can i change it?
The file you download of your Zwift activity is a .fit file. Make sure that’s the extension, then it should upload to Strava.
Yes, this is so frustrating as the same thing happened to me just now…. Finished a group ride event, then switched into Richmond course for a few minutes, then now cannot even find the whole group ride event activity anywhere…. So disappointed as I was trying to hit those mileage numbers for my weekly goal.
Thanks for this – very helpful and recovered a long ride for me.
I have a “lost” ride on apple TV. You say above “Try visiting my.zwift.com to download the ride file, which you can then upload to Strava.” How do you download a ride file from my.zwift.com?
Click your activity, then click the gear. The link to download it is in the popup window.
Many thanks for the prompt response. When I click on the activity all I get is a “throbbing” “Z”.
Hi! I have a simply question! I want to try everesting, but my sensor disconnect automatically if I stop riding for few minutes and I’m not able to reconnect without exiting the app. Is there a way to continue a stopped activity on Zwift? Also because I’m afraid that something could go wrong in so many hours and I could lose internet connection. And it would be a pity to lose my efforts after hours of riding.
Thank you in advance!
Good afternoon! So if I’ve understand: i can’t upload the lost file in my Zwift’s profile. Correct? i mean, can I somehow recover a ride and insert it in Zwift?
Thank u
same question here…
I’ve found the .fit file on my PC and uploaded it to Strava, which is great!
But I still want it to be credited on Zwift! I want my badge!!!
You can’t upload your files to your Zwift account… not at this time, at least. And support can’t load them in for you, either.
Eric, Lost power amidst Alp du Zwift. On zwift.com, my partial ride appears with icon like other rides. However, when I click on it, the page just hangs with a flashing “Z.” Any other way to get at the file and download it? Thank you. PS I use Apple TV, so the files do not download to my computer.
Good ol’ Apple TV!
Two ideas:
If you’re on ZwiftPower, your activity may be saved there.
Have you tried starting a ride on AppleTV again? I hear Zwift is letting riders resume interrupted rides on AppleTV, which might work for you…
I just tried the iOS method above. Tapping Zwift logo 3x does nothing!?!?
Zwift rides do not always save on MacBook Pro. Why is that? Please advise?
It didn’t work for me. I finished my ride and before I can save it, app quit on its own. Anyway to retrieve the data?
I attempted the NYC High Line circuit for the badge today through my Apple TV app. It appears to have taken me the wrong way at the first junction! Upon termination of the ride (after 15+ miles – something was clearly wrong) it sent the result to Strava (I can see it!!) but it isn’t showing on the Zwift companion app. A second attempt worked fine by appearing on Strava & Zwift but I still didn’t get the badge as after 8 miles I quit – believing something was wrong as I was expecting to do about 6.5 miles. I… Read more »
Hey Eric A very helpful post. Thanks. Unfortunately, today I rode 100 km on Zwift and lost the entire activity. My biggest mistake was using the Apple TV, as when I have had this issue before your iOS tips have largely helped me recover the ride and load it on to Strava. They really need to take the Apple TV app off the market if they cannot support it properly. The issue I have now is that the Zwift support won’t credit my account with the missing km due to so-called ‘technical limitations’. I have images captured from Zwift with… Read more »