TomTom Itinerary (.itn)
An ITN file is a TomTom itinerary — an ordered list of stops for turn-by-turn navigation. It is a plan for a journey, not a recording of one.
At a glance
| Extension | .itn |
| Encoding | text |
| Invented | 2000 |
| By | TomTom |
History
TomTom introduced the itinerary file in 2000 as an extension of a plain text file, and it has stayed deliberately simple ever since. That simplicity is why the format outlived several generations of TomTom hardware and why motorcycle touring communities still trade routes as .itn files.
Where it is used
ITN is read by TomTom navigation devices — the GO and Rider lines in particular — and by TomTom's MyDrive and the older HOME route-planning software. It is the usual exchange format in motorcycle touring circles, where a shared route is meant to be driven rather than looked at.
Structure
An ITN file is plain text in Windows-1252 encoding, one waypoint per line, with four pipe-separated fields: longitude, latitude, description and type. Coordinates are fixed-point integers in WGS 84 — the decimal degrees multiplied by 100000, so latitude 52.493601 is written 5249360. The type flag says how the device should treat the point: 0 a regular waypoint, 1 a disabled waypoint, 2 a stopover or destination, 3 a disabled stopover, and 4 the departure point, which only the first line should carry.
How widespread
Within the TomTom world ITN is the route format; outside it, almost nothing reads it. Device limits matter too: as of 2014 devices accept up to 255 waypoints, while earlier models allowed only 32 to 48, or 100 on the Rider — so a long GPX route often has to be reduced before it will load.
RouteConverter support
| Reads | Tom Tom 5 Route, Tom Tom 9.5 Route |
| Writes | Tom Tom 5 Route, Tom Tom 9.5 Route |
RouteConverter reads and writes both dialects: the classic TomTom 5 layout and the TomTom 9.5 variant used by later devices.