- The great Google Maps Timeline switch deadline has been extended
- It keeps Timeline data exclusively on your smartphone
- Google gives you control over how long your data is saved for
Earlier this year Google announced that its Google Maps Timeline feature – which tracks where you go, over time – would be only available on phones in the future, with the web portal scheduled to be shut down near the end of 2024. Now it seems you’ve got a bit longer to switch over, if you want to keep your data.
As spotted by 9to5Google, Android Police, and others, a significant number of users are getting emails and on-screen alerts mentioning a deadline of June 9, 2025. If you want to keep the Timeline data you’ve got stored in the cloud after that date, you need to move it to your Android or iOS phone before the deadline.
However, that revised date may not be the same for everyone: on my phone, I’m getting a message that sets a deadline of April 6, 2025. Previously, Google has said that users get “approximately six months” from their first notification about this to move over, so it may depend on if you’ve already been warned.
To be sure, load up Google Maps on your phone, tap your account picture (top right), then choose Your Timeline. If you do want to keep your data on your phone going forward, you’ll be taken step-by-step through the process. At the same time, you can select how long Timeline data is saved for.
What’s going on?
For years, Google has offered an optional Location History feature that tracks your comings and goings via your phone. The Timeline – available via the Google Maps apps and website – has been the user-facing part of Location History, letting you go back in time to see visited places and trips taken for any specific day, week, or month.
While some users are understandably reticent to let Google keep that much information, Timeline appears to be pretty popular: people use it to relive vacations and road trips, find that coffee shop they really liked that they visited two years ago, and to make sure their travel expenses are in order, for example.
The changes now underway mean Timeline data won’t be stored in the cloud or available on the web any more – it’ll just be on your phone. Google hasn’t said too much about the reasons why, but presumably privacy and data security are the main ones. In addition, Location History (including settings for deleting older data) is fully folding into Timeline.
While encrypted backups will still enable users to move Timeline data between devices in the future (for new phone upgrades, for example), the shift will be inconvenient for those who liked to explore their travel history through Google Maps on the web, or who had several different devices contributing to it.
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