Route or Track? Is there a difference?

Garmins take on Routes and Tracks is here:  https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=v0rJAHy2hq3prHjRlxdRw5 but this omits the use of tracks to plan walks.

You can plan a walk either as a route or a track and either will be contained in a GPX file which you upload to your GPS receiver. You can therefore download someone else's GPX file which may contain a route or a track and before use, you should know which type you have as they are handled differently by your GPSr. 

A route contains a series of waypoints that are navigated in turn to take you along a walk, of which some or all will be alerting when such a route is being navigated using the GPS receiver (a bit like a car satnav). The non-alerting points are called shaping points, since that is all they do (they won't beep or display a turn arrow).

A track is simply a set of track points with no routing or navigation that cannot be used in your GPSr to provide turn-by-turn assistance. Tracks are just a set of linked points defining a path, just like drawing a pencil line on a paper map. You can generate a track by plotting an intended route over a digital map or over aerial imaging such as in Google Earth. Of course if your GPSr is set to record, you will capture the track of where you and your GPSr actually went. Many downloadable GPX files are just that - a track recording of that individual's walk.

You can also convert between tracks and routes in programs like Garmin BaseCamp. The track points in a track are converted to routable waypoints. Conversely, the waypoints in a route are converted to track points with no routing information.

I believe that the Ordnance Survey Mapping app (and others) always exports GPX files as routes since it presumes you want to use it to navigate turn-by-turn, even if they are originally uploaded as tracks and thus converts all the track points to waypoints.

Routes are limited to the number of waypoints that your device can support and this may vary depending on whether you are using direct routing or routing preferences according to an activity profile.   

Tracks are simpler and can be much, much longer with thousands of track points.  I prefer to plot my walks as tracks and look at the line of the planned path directly on the map on the device and don't therefore need direction arrows or proximity beeps. People not so used to map reading may well prefer to use routes.

The bottom line is that one is not better than the other, they are simply different and you have to decide which suits your planning and navigation needs.. 

"Historically", a track is a recording of the actual path you took. It has lots of GPS coordinates and traces every turn and curve on the path you traveled on.

One can create a synthetic track, something that looks like a recorded track but is created by tracing a path on a computer (either by somebody drawing the path or calculated by a computer program).

A route is a set of points you "must visit" (must pass through) in a particular order on your trip. There are not that many of these and they could be waypoints or "viapoints" (points other than track points).

With a route, you care about passing through the waypoints but you don't "care" (too much) about how you travel between them. That is, you are fine letting the computer (either BaseCamp or your GPS unit) figure out the path between waypoints.

Some GPS units can use route files. Others can't (you have to use track files).

Most GPS units (maybe, some ones for cars can't) can do useful things with track files (maybe, just as something to follow without turn instructions).

The Edge units used for cycling can only use track files. These units calculate turn instructions ("turn guidance") by "walking the track" and picking up the roads on the device map that the track appears to be following. The idea here is that you could take an actual record of a ride and get turn instructions out of it. When you uses programs (like BaseCamp or the Ridewithgps website) to create "courses" for these units, you have to save the file as a track. BaseCamp has a "create track" option for routes.

BaseCamp also has an option to create a route from a track.

I tend to always use routes when walking. I note you mentioned you want to be alerted when you go off route. If you want that you'll need to use routes.

Thanks for all the replies, very helpful. Just one response from me.....I see one reply suggests I must use a "route" if I want an off-course warning. On the eTrex 20, the setting for being off-course is within the

There's no technical reason that an off-course warning should require a route. The Edges provide it for tracks.

It's kind of inexcusable that the eTrex, a unit for hiking where one might not be walking on a path on the map, require a route for it.

The off-course warning would be relative to the track calculated from the route. So, it would clearly be possible to have an off-course warning without a route.

I think you're right. But, I'm relaxed about it, now that I know the difference between the two. It just needs a bit more effort on my part to make sure that the data I put in the eTrex 20 is a route and not a track! The off-course warning, via the proximity alarm feature, is a nice add-on. I suspect a more expensive device will have a better feature. When I was out in the hills last year, I was only carrying an eTrex 10, and I drifted off course through my own fault and wandering mind and found myself in more difficulty than I would have liked. But, all was well and it was a vaulable lesson! I've since used the eTrex 20 and been alerted a couple of times but it was nothing serious =- just a minor deviation from the waypoints and, arguably, a bit of a nuisance. But, it also was good to know that it was there if I really got myself off-course.

Just be careful when creating routes in BaseCamp, and indeed elsewhere.  Your Etrex in Direct or Off road mode can only cope with 250 points in a route.  BaseCamp will send routes containing more than 250 without warning you, but your device will simply stop at 250.  I generally remember to check but a couple of times over the years I've got to the end of my route only to find I'm not at the end I planned!!  If you're navigating using a routing profile, so set to 'On road', the limit is 50 points.

ALso very helpful., thanks. TBH, I doubt that any of my routes would need that many points - I rarely walk more than 8 or 10 miles in a single hike.....But, it's good to know, thanks!

One other type worth to mention is a "course". So we can have routes, tracks and courses.

Courses fall "kind of in the middle" of the other two and can be either a .fit or a tcx file.

Its more like a track (which cares with the whole path so you don't have to cross a lake swimming like a route would tell you to do) but gives you warning and TBT directions.