Import Google Timeline into a map

Google Maps Timeline is a log of where your phone has been. You can export that location history from Google, and FOG can import it, so years of past movement appear on your map at once instead of starting from a blank world.

What Google Maps Timeline actually is

Google Maps Timeline is the record Google keeps of where your phone has been. If you had Location History switched on, it has been logging places, routes and dates in the background, in some cases for years. Most people never open it. When they do, they get a day at a time: a date picker, a short list of stops, and a small map of that one day.

That is the limitation. Timeline is a log, not a picture. It can tell you that you were on a particular street on a particular Tuesday in 2019. It will not show you, in a single view, every street you have ever walked. All the information is there. The shape of it is not.

Google moved Timeline onto the phone

Google changed how this works. For most people, Timeline data now lives on the device rather than in a Google account you browse on the web, and the old full desktop view of your history is not what it was. If you went looking for your Timeline on a computer recently and could not find what you remembered, that is why.

Two practical consequences follow. First, your history is now tied to a phone, and phones get lost, replaced and wiped. Second, Google offers auto-delete settings for location data, so depending on how yours are set, older entries can be removed on a schedule without you doing anything.

If the history matters to you, the sensible move is to get a copy of it out of Google and hold it yourself. Do not assume a years-long record will still be sitting there next year.

Exporting your location history

Google Takeout is the general route. It is Google's own export service, it covers most Google products, and location history is one of the things it can package up for you. Some phones can also export Timeline data from within the Maps app itself.

We are deliberately not printing a numbered list of buttons to press. Google renames menus, moves settings between the app and the web, and changes the structure of the export files. A blog post with a screenshot of the exact screen goes stale the moment Google ships a redesign, and following a stale path is how people wrongly conclude their data is gone.

So: check Google's current export instructions in their own help pages, and follow those. A few things are worth knowing whatever the current path looks like. The export is usually prepared in the background and delivered as a download link rather than instantly. A long history can be a large file. If you are offered a choice of data format, take note of what you picked, because it determines what you can do with the file afterwards.

What FOG does with the export

FOG is a fog of war walking map. The entire world map starts hidden under fog. Every street you physically walk gets revealed, permanently, and stays clear. Walk enough and you end up with a map of everywhere you have walked, drawn in the negative space of the fog.

By default that begins from zero on the day you install it. History import is the shortcut. Hand FOG a Google Timeline export and it reads the movement in that file and clears the fog along it. Instead of a blank world and a promise that it will fill in eventually, you open the app to the last several years of your own life already on the map: the old commute, the streets around a flat you moved out of, the week in another country.

History import is part of the one-time unlock, a single purchase of USD $5.99 that also unlocks unlimited ranks and every character. There is no subscription and there never will be.

GPX files work too

Google is not the only place your movement is recorded. FOG also accepts GPX files, which is the standard format most GPS watches and fitness apps use when they let you export your activities.

That matters if your walking and running history is split across services. Old recorded routes, a watch you stopped wearing, tracks from a phone app you have since abandoned: if you can get them out as GPX, they can go on the map alongside the Google data.

Be honest about what imported data can show

An import is only as good as what Google actually recorded. This is the part most pages skip.

• Any period where Location History was off simply is not in the file. Nothing can recover it.
• Gaps happen for ordinary reasons: a dead battery, a phone left at home, a tunnel, a basement, a long stretch of bad signal.
• Sampling varies. Some days are recorded densely, some sparsely, and a sparse day produces a thinner line on the map.
• Google's records include however you were travelling at the time, not just walking. FOG works for walking, running and riding, so what appears reflects the file, not a judgement about how you got there.

Import fills in your history. It does not invent it. Expect a map that is generous in some years and patchy in others, and expect it to look like a real life rather than a clean dataset.

As a Google Timeline alternative

People searching for a Timeline alternative are usually after one of two things: a better view of their own movement, or a way to keep that record without it living in a Google account.

FOG covers both. The view is the whole point, a single world map that gets brighter the more of it you have stood on, with ranks that climb as your covered area grows and a percentage for any city you have walked. As for the record, FOG has no account and no sign-up, keeps no cloud copy, and runs no analytics, ads or tracking. Your map stays on your phone. You can export your own data whenever you want.

It keeps revealing with the app closed and the screen off, so once the import is done the map carries on filling in from ordinary days. FOG runs on iOS and Android, and it is free to explore before you unlock anything.

Questions people actually ask

Start with a dark map.

FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.

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