You planned a great ride and marked the things that matter — the café at kilometre 45, the water fountain that's easy to miss, the steep gravel descent. You load it onto your Hammerhead Karoo and… the pins are gone, or they're nameless dots. The route line is there, but everything you marked has vanished.
It's one of the most common frustrations for Karoo owners, and it isn't your fault. It's a platform gap — and there's a free way around it.
Why the Karoo loses your waypoints
Two things conspire here. First, the Hammerhead Dashboard doesn't read POIs from a route file — upload a GPX and you get the track, but the waypoints are dropped. Second, the usual planners don't help: Komoot and Strava don't export rich waypoints in a way that survives the trip to the device. So no matter how carefully you marked your route, the Karoo shows a bare line.
The core issue: the Karoo only shows pins it gets from a connected service like RideWithGPS — not from a file you upload directly. So the trick is to route your waypoints through RideWithGPS.
The free bridge: RideWithGPS
RideWithGPS does two helpful things on a free account: it imports the waypoints from a GPX as POIs, and it syncs routes to the Hammerhead Dashboard. So if your GPX has proper, named, described waypoints to begin with, RideWithGPS will carry them across to your Karoo — names, notes, and cue-sheet alerts included.
The catch is the “to begin with.” You need a GPX that actually contains good waypoints. That's where VeloPin comes in.
Where VeloPin fits
VeloPin is the tool that creates the enriched route in the first place. Plan a route or import one, drop your waypoints with proper names and notes — café, water, summit, caution — and export a clean GPX. Komoot and Strava can't hand you that; VeloPin's whole job is producing a properly marked-up route file. Feed that into RideWithGPS and the pins come through.
Step by step
- Enrich the route in VeloPin and export the GPX.
- Import it to RideWithGPS (a free account is fine) — your waypoints arrive as POIs with their names and descriptions.
- Pin the route in RideWithGPS. This step is easy to miss: Hammerhead only syncs pinned routes. Pinning is free.
- Link RideWithGPS in the Hammerhead Dashboard (once), then press the Sync button on the Routes page. Routes don't appear on their own.
- Ride. Your pins are on the Karoo with names and notes, and they show up in the cue sheet as you approach.
Route didn't sync? You don't have to wait on the auto-sync. In the Hammerhead Dashboard, click Add → Import and paste your RideWithGPS route link (e.g. ridewithgps.com/routes/12345) — the route comes straight in, along with the POIs you pinned. Handy when a route stubbornly won't appear after pressing Sync.
One honest caveat: the icons
The pins arrive with the right names and descriptions, but the icon comes in generic. The Karoo doesn't read the category from any imported file — there's no file format that fixes this, and we tested several. The good news: you can recolor each pin in the Hammerhead Dashboard for free (open the route, click a pin, pick its type, save). Your VeloPin names tell you exactly which is which, so it's quick.
Prefer no RideWithGPS? Upload VeloPin's GPX straight to the Hammerhead Dashboard (the route imports fine) and add pins yourself with the dashboard's built-in Pin tool. Fully free and native — just manual.
Easier on a COROS Dura
Choosing a computer? The COROS Dura handles this far better than the Karoo — it imports waypoints directly and VeloPin maps the icons automatically, with no RideWithGPS detour. See the COROS Dura guide →
And on a Wahoo?
If you ride a Wahoo ELEMNT, none of this applies — VeloPin maps your waypoints to the right Wahoo icons and types directly, and they show up correctly on the device with no detour. The Karoo workaround above exists because Hammerhead's ecosystem handles POIs differently, not because the route file is wrong.
One tool, every head unit. VeloPin gets your waypoints onto a Wahoo ELEMNT, a COROS Dura and a Garmin Edge — each with the right icons for that device — and onto a Hammerhead Karoo via this free RideWithGPS sync. Riding a Garmin? See the Garmin Edge guide.
Getting the route onto your Karoo
The Karoo gets routes from RideWithGPS or the Hammerhead Dashboard — and a free RideWithGPS account is all you need:
- Phone, via the RideWithGPS app — use VeloPin's Send to phone QR to download the GPX, open it in the free RideWithGPS app, then pin the route. (Tested — works on a free account.)
- Desktop, via the RideWithGPS website — upload the GPX and pin the route.
- Route only — drag the GPX straight onto the Hammerhead Dashboard's Routes page (no pins).
Then press Sync on the Hammerhead Dashboard and the Karoo downloads the route over Wi-Fi.
The takeaway
Karoo owners have had no easy way to get named waypoints onto the device. The free path is: plan and enrich in VeloPin, bridge through a free RideWithGPS account, pin and sync. Your café, water and climb markers arrive with their names and notes — and a couple of clicks in the dashboard gives them the right icons too.
Frequently asked questions
Why won't my waypoints show on my Hammerhead Karoo?
The Karoo does not read POIs directly from a GPX file, and Komoot and Strava drop rich waypoint detail on export, so your cafe, water and junction markers do not appear on the device.
What is the free workaround to get waypoints onto a Karoo?
Prepare your route in VeloPin, then use the free RideWithGPS bridge. The waypoint names and notes carry across through the route sync, and you re-colour the icons once on the device. VeloPin links a step-by-step guide for the exact process.
Do waypoint names and notes survive the process?
Yes. The names and notes carry through the RideWithGPS sync to the Karoo; only the icon colour needs a quick manual touch on the newer units.
Is VeloPin free to use?
The route planner is free and needs no account. Device waypoint export is part of VeloPin Pro.