Import from your dive computer

Last updated: August 28, 2026

ELEMENT | 08 reads dive files directly: Garmin .fit, Suunto .sml, UDDF, CSV, and Subsurface XML. If your computer can hand you one of those, just share it to the app and you are done.

This page is for the rest: a computer with no export of its own, or one whose app only talks to its own cloud. Cressi Nepto and Nepto King are the common case, and the route below works for them.

// WHAT YOU NEED

A computer, once. Subsurface is a free, open-source dive log for Mac, Windows and Linux. It knows how to talk to more than a hundred dive computers, including several that have no other way out, and it can write a file this app understands.

You only do this when you want to move dives across. It is not something you need after every session.

// 1 · DOWNLOAD YOUR DIVES INTO SUBSURFACE

Install Subsurface, then use Import → Import from dive computer. Pick your make and model, choose Bluetooth or USB as your computer requires, and download.

Your dives appear in Subsurface's list. Check the ones you expect are there before going on.

// 2 · EXPORT AS SUBSURFACE XML

File → Export, and choose Subsurface XML. Not UDDF, not CSV, not the HTML export: those either lose the depth profile or arrive without the detail the app needs.

Save the .xml file somewhere you can reach from your phone.

// 3 · SEND IT TO YOUR PHONE

Email it to yourself, drop it in a cloud folder, AirDrop it, or message it. Anything that lands the file on the phone works.

// 4 · OPEN IT IN ELEMENT | 08

Tap the file on your phone and choose ELEMENT | 08 from the share sheet. Or open the app and use Logbook → Import and pick the file.

The app reads the profiles, splits each outing into its individual dives, and works out depths, times, descent and ascent for every one of them.

// ABOUT FREEDIVING COMPUTERS AND ONE LONG "DIVE"

Most freediving computers record a whole session as a single long dive: one entry that runs for an hour or more, with every descent inside it. Subsurface shows it that way because that is how the watch stored it.

ELEMENT | 08 splits it back apart. An eighty-seven minute entry with eighteen descents in it becomes eighteen dives with the surface intervals between them, which is what you actually did.

// IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG

• "No dive data found in this file." The export was probably a different format. Go back to step 2 and choose Subsurface XML specifically.
• Dives are there but the depths look wrong. Check whether Subsurface is set to imperial units and the file says ft. The app converts either way, so tell us if it does not.
• Subsurface cannot see your computer. That is between Subsurface and the watch, and their documentation covers pairing per model. We cannot help from this side.
• Your imported dives are greyed out in the logbook. That is on purpose: imported dives arrive excluded from your statistics so a bulk import cannot quietly rewrite your averages. Include the ones you want.

// A COMPUTER WE SHOULD READ DIRECTLY?

If you are doing this often, tell us which computer. Reading a device straight over Bluetooth is work we will do for a make that enough divers actually use, and knowing which one is the whole difference.