As most of you might know, Google Maps has a feature called Timeline. It saves the locations you visit and the trips you make using your Android or iOS device’s location and allows you to access that information later for various purposes. Until December 2023, this feature saved your location history in your Google account (on the cloud), and therefore, you could access it in Google Maps on any platform, even on the web.
In December 2023, Google announced that it has started saving your location history on your device rather than in the cloud to improve privacy. Along with that, the brand announced that starting from 9 June 2024, it would start deleting your location history saved in your Google account, once again, to improve privacy, and that if you wanted to retain that data, you would have to transfer it to your smartphone or tablet.
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Google sends email to people about new Google Maps Timeline policy
It also meant that after 9 June 2024, you wouldn’t be able to access your Timeline data in Google Maps on any platform other than your device, including the web. However, in December 2023, Google displayed that information only in the Timeline section of the Google Maps app. So, not many people were aware of the change. Well, to fix that, Google has now sent an email to people announcing the change to location history.
Since people who just go to know about the change through the email won’t have much time to transfer their Timeline data to their smartphone or tablet, the company is extending the deadline for them to transfer their location history to their device till 1 December 2024. Google says that to transfer the Timeline data from your Google account to your device, your device must be running the latest version of the Google Maps app.
So, if you want to retain your location history in Google Maps, you will have to update the Google Maps app on your device and transfer that data to your device within the next five months. At the moment, the change to Timeline seems to be limited to the United States as people in many other countries, including India, haven’t received any such email. Google could extend the latest policy to other regions around the globe soon.
