The Google Maps Location History/Timeline change is still rolling out

Abner Li | Nov 20 2024 - 1:38 pm PT

Last December, Google announced a big change to how Maps Location History works. Your location “Timeline” is now being stored on your phone, with Google Maps still rolling out this update.

For starters, “Location History” is being renamed to “Timeline.” After previously being cloud-based, Google Maps is switching to a local, on-device approach that better preserves user privacy (Google will no longer be able to respond to geofence warrants).

However, this means Timelines are now phone-specific and multiple devices cannot contribute to it. There’s a new backup and device transfer system, while Your Timeline is no longer available on the web after this change.

Google is still rolling out this change. Back in December, the company said this will “gradually roll out through [2024].” The company reiterated that timeframe to us today:

As we shared in our blog post, this update is rolling out gradually. This means people will see different deletion deadlines, approximately six months from when they were first notified about this change to their account.

—Google spokesperson

Users will receive an email (along with push and in-app notifications) detailing what’s happening when this change is available for their account. It will be sent by “Google Location History” with a “Keep your Timeline? Decide by [date]” subject line.

After receiving that notification, users will have around six months to keep and move their Location History/Timeline data. It will be deleted if users do not take action inside Google Maps for Android or iOS.

Google has not sent out that email to all users yet. Reports are ramping up, but nothing should change until you receive that notification, with six months serving as a fairly long lead time.