Google Maps Timeline adding dedicated ‘Trips’ view and coming to Google Photos

Abner Li | Nov 10 2020 - 7:00 am PT

For users that have Location History enabled, the Timeline view in Google Maps provides a nice visualization of where they’ve been. The Timeline is soon coming to Google Photos, and will be augmented by a “Trips” view in Maps.

While the dedicated experience has been long deprecated, Google Trips-esque features still live on through Search, Maps, and google.com/travel. In Google Maps, the current Reservations view (under the “Saved” tab) is focused on showing upcoming events.

A more historical-oriented view is now coming to Maps for Android. Once available, tap the the top-right profile image and then “Your timeline.” There will be a new “Trips” tab joining Day, Places, Cities, and World.

It’s geared at showing a “summary of your past vacations, along with information about the places you visited, the total kilometers traveled, and the modes of transportation you used.” Your “Latest” trip gets a large cover image, with all others listed in the feed below. After some basic travel stats, there are carousels for specific “Places,” “Destinations” (cities), and “Your itinerary.”

This feature is coming “soon” to Google Maps for Android.

Meanwhile, Timeline is coming to the map view that launched with the big Google Photos redesign earlier this year. At the moment, you can tap on the Photos map to jump to a location or scroll through a grid of images as the location pin above jumps to that place.

The new Timeline in Photos will show the “paths you took on a certain day alongside your photos.” Users will have the option to “show or hide your Timeline from your map view’s settings in Photos at any time.” It will be available “in the coming weeks.”

These two historical features come as Google highlights how its travel and hotel products surface advisory or restrictions related to COVID-19. This includes a Map layer and information directly when navigating.