TimelineMap FAQ: Google Maps Timeline viewer questions

No. Your file is processed on your device and never uploaded to our servers. TimelineMap.app reads your Google Maps export inside your browser, so your messages, history and other contents stay on your device.

To be completely open: the page itself also loads ad, consent and analytics scripts (Google AdSense and a cookieless Umami counter). Those scripts never receive your file or anything read from it. See the privacy policy for details.

Opening and browsing your file is free, and stays free. A one-time €5.99 unlock (no subscription) adds exports and downloads and lifts the free size limits for large files on TimelineMap.app. It pays for development and hosting. Ads stay on for everyone, and free viewing never goes away.

Lost access on a new browser? Use Restore purchase with the email you paid with.

New Google Maps Timeline exports (from Android and iPhone) usually contain only a place ID and coordinates for each visit, not the name of the place. Looking names up would mean calling the Google Places service, which costs money and would send your locations off your device, so we don't.

Instead, TimelineMap shows the city and country from an offline dataset, and you can name any place yourself. Those names stay in your browser. Old Takeout Semantic Location History files often do include names, and we show them when they are there.

No. As far as we know, there is no way to import location history back into Google Maps Timeline, not from an export file, not from Takeout, and not with any tool. The only restore Google offers is its own encrypted Timeline backup, which restores to the Google Maps app on your phone. Keep your export files safe: they are your copy.

No. Your file is processed on your device and never uploaded to our servers. The map background (tiles) loads from the map provider, OpenFreeMap, which sees the map area being viewed, like any online map, but never your file or your history.

• The new Android export, Timeline.json (Settings → Location → Location services → Timeline → Export Timeline data).
• The new iPhone export from the Google Maps app.
• Old Google Takeout Records.json.
• Old Takeout Semantic Location History monthly files (drop the whole folder or the zip).

The format is detected automatically. See how to export and what's in the file.

Usually, yes. Files are read in a stream in the background, so exports of hundreds of megabytes open fine on a desktop or laptop browser. Phones have less memory, so very large files are better opened on a computer.

The free view covers up to 2 years of data or 150 MB. The one-time €5.99 unlock removes that limit.

Yes. Drop several files together and TimelineMap merges them into one history, removing duplicates by time. This helps if you switched phones or still have a Takeout archive from before the December 2024 change. Merging, and downloading the merged result as a clean JSON file, is part of the unlock.

New phone exports store the local UTC offset with every entry, so each day follows where you actually were: a morning in Tokyo shows Tokyo time. Old Takeout files store times in UTC only, so those are shown in your browser's time zone. If you travelled a lot, old Takeout days can therefore look shifted by a few hours.

Yes. The map, day view and stats work in mobile browsers on Android and iPhone, and you can open the file straight from your downloads or Files app. For many years of history a computer is faster and more comfortable, and a few hundred megabytes can be too much for a phone's memory.

Yes. You can export a single day, a date range or everything as GPX (for Strava, Garmin, OsmAnd, photo geotagging), KML (Google Earth), CSV or GeoJSON. Exports are part of the one-time €5.99 unlock. See converting Timeline to GPX.

A printable one-page summary of a year: a map of everywhere you went plus your stats (distance by mode, countries, cities, days away from home). You can download it as PNG or PDF. It is part of the unlock.

Each place is matched to the nearest city with 15,000 or more inhabitants in the GeoNames dataset, which is bundled with the site and looked up on your device. That works well in most places, but near borders, in the countryside or in small towns the nearest big city can be in the wrong country or a different town. Treat the counts as a good estimate. Data sources are listed on Data sources and attribution.

In this browser's IndexedDB storage, on your device. They are not sent to us and do not sync between browsers or devices. Clearing this site's data (or browsing data) in your browser removes them.