Practical

How to download your Google Maps history (the 2026 way)

August 28, 2026 924 words

If you are sitting at a computer looking for this option, you will not find it. Not because it is hidden — because it was removed. The real path is on the phone, and it takes two minutes.

I am writing this because it is the question I get asked most, and the answer has changed twice in two years. Here is the version that works now, and then why it got so confusing.

On Android

The surprising part: this is not inside the Google Maps app. It is in your phone’s own Settings.

Open Settings, go to Location, choose Location services, tap Timeline. At the bottom there is a line saying “Export Timeline data”. Tap it and the phone prepares the file and opens the share sheet.

Menu names vary a little between phones — manufacturers love renaming settings. But the last step always says “export”, and it is always under Location.

On iPhone

On iOS it is the other way round: everything happens inside Google Maps.

Open Maps, tap your profile picture in the top right, choose Your Timeline. From the three-dot menu, find “Export Timeline data”. When the share sheet opens, tap Save to Files, pick a folder, save.

The file arrives as location-history.json.

Why it does not work from a computer

Because the data is no longer there. Across 2024 and 2025 Google moved the location record off its servers and onto the phone, and retired the web map that showed it. As a privacy change it is a good one — where you have been now sits in your pocket rather than in a data centre. In practice it means one thing: to get your data you need the phone in your hand.

Google Takeout still works, but the archive you get from it no longer contains the detailed Timeline. Older years, 2023 and before, may still be in there and are worth keeping — but that is not the file today’s tools expect.

Once you have it: where to put the file

Somewhere. Genuinely, that is the only thing that matters. Since the data now lives only on the phone, that file is your only backup. Lose the phone or move to a new one and the history goes with it.

The file is small — usually one or two megabytes for a year. Email it to yourself, put it in cloud storage, drop it in a folder. Which one does not matter; having one does.

A habit worth forming: once a year, at the end of the year. It takes five minutes and secures the whole year. It is also worth exporting straight after a long trip, for a reason I will get to in the next section.

Watch out for auto-delete

Timeline has an auto-delete setting, and on some accounts it arrives switched on. The options are three months, eighteen months and thirty-six months. If yours is set to three months, last summer’s trip is already gone and your file holds nothing older than ninety days.

You can see that setting on the same Timeline screen. Extending it will not bring the history back, but it protects everything from here on. It is the first thing to check before a long trip — checking afterwards is usually too late.

If the file comes out tiny

A few kilobytes means there is nothing recorded. The three usual causes: Timeline was never switched on, auto-delete is set short, or battery saving is putting Google Maps to sleep in the background. The third is the sneakiest, because every setting looks right and no data arrives.

On Android, setting Maps to “unrestricted” battery usage in the app settings usually fixes it. The location permission also has to be “always” rather than “while using the app” — otherwise nothing is recorded while you are moving with the screen off.

What to do next

You have the file. A text editor will open it, but reading it is no fun; it arrives as one long line. Seeing it on a map is a better use of it.

That is exactly what Wanderlapse does: it reads the file and turns where you went into a video that draws itself across a map — snapping thinly recorded drives onto the real road network rather than joining them with straight lines. The file is never uploaded; it stays inside your browser.

You can also convert it to GPX or KML and open it in other mapping tools. Whichever route you take, the first step is the same: export it from your phone. Without that step there is no rest.

If you use two phones

Because the data lives on the device now, using one account on two phones means each keeps its own share. A week spent carrying the tablet will not appear in the export you take from the phone. If you have been moving between two devices, exporting from both can explain periods you thought were missing.

If you want the older years too

The phone export only covers what the device holds. Anything from 2023 and earlier — the years Google still kept on its servers — may be sitting in Takeout. The format is old but readable and worth keeping. Do not try to merge the two files; the structures differ, so just store them separately.

Before you hand the file to anything

A location history file contains where you live, where you work and who you visit. If you are giving it to a tool, look for the answer to “is my file uploaded”; if the answer is vague, it probably is. And do not leave it sitting in a shared cloud folder. Keep a backup, but not a visible one.