TimelineMap.app

Convert Google Maps Timeline to GPX (and KML)

Updated

Your Google Maps Timeline export is a JSON file that almost no other app understands. GPX and KML are the formats the rest of the mapping world speaks. TimelineMap converts one into the other right in your browser: drop the file, pick the days you want, and download a GPX or KML file.

Open your Timeline file

What are GPX and KML?

GPX (GPS Exchange Format) is a plain XML format for tracks, routes and waypoints. Nearly every fitness, hiking and navigation app can import it. KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is the XML format used by Google Earth and many GIS tools; it is good at showing places and lines with names and styles.

Why convert your Timeline?

  • Strava and other fitness apps: upload a walk or bike ride you forgot to record.
  • Google Earth: fly along a road trip or holiday in 3D using the KML export.
  • Garmin and OsmAnd: load a past route onto a GPS device or an offline map app to repeat it.
  • Photo geotagging: tools such as Lightroom, darktable, GeoSetter or ExifTool can match a GPX track to photo timestamps and add locations to pictures taken with a camera that has no GPS.
  • Keeping a copy: GPX is an open, long-lived format that doesn't depend on any one company.

How to convert, step by step

  1. Export your Timeline from your phone. If you haven't yet, follow the Android and iPhone export guide. Old Takeout files (Records.json or the Semantic Location History folder) work too.
  2. Open TimelineMap and drop the file onto the page. Large files are read in the background with a progress bar.
  3. Choose what to export: a single day, a date range or everything.
  4. Click Export GPX (or KML, CSV or GeoJSON). The file is created in your browser and saved to your downloads.
  5. Import it into Strava, Google Earth, your Garmin app or wherever you need it.

What's inside the GPX file

  • GPX 1.1, the current standard version, so it opens in modern apps without warnings.
  • Waypoints for visits: one per place you stayed, with its time range and your own place name if you added one.
  • Tracks with timestamps for trips: every recorded point keeps its time, so apps can show speed and duration and photo tools can match pictures.
  • The travel mode (walking, driving, flying…) of each trip.
  • Full detail: the map simplifies paths to stay fast, but exports keep every point from your file.

Some apps, Strava in particular, expect one activity per file. For those, export a single day or a short range rather than everything.

KML for Google Earth, plus CSV and GeoJSON

The KML export holds the same visits and trips as placemarks and lines, ready to open in Google Earth (desktop or web). If you'd rather work with the data yourself:

  • CSV: one row per visit or trip with start, end, coordinates, mode and distance. Opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
  • GeoJSON: for QGIS, Mapbox, Leaflet, kepler.gl and most web-mapping tools.

Free to view, one-time unlock to export

Opening your file, browsing the map and heatmap, the day view and the yearly stats are free. Downloads (GPX, KML, CSV, GeoJSON, merged JSON and the year poster) are part of a one-time €5.99 unlock, with no subscription. It also removes the free size limit and lets you merge several files, such as an old Takeout archive and a new phone export. The unlock helps pay for development and hosting.

Privacy

Location history is about as personal as data gets. Your file is processed on your device and never uploaded to our servers. The conversion runs in your browser, and the GPX or KML file is created there too. The map background is loaded from a tile server, which sees which area of the map you are looking at, like any online map, but never your file or your history.

Ready?

Open your Timeline file and export GPX. Not sure what the file contains? See What's in your Timeline export.