How to back up your location history
Years of location history used to sit safely in a cloud account. Now, for most people, it lives on one phone with auto-delete settings attached. If that record matters to you, keep your own copy.
Why it is at risk
Google moved Timeline onto devices. That is better for privacy, and it changes the risk. A phone can be lost, broken, replaced or wiped, and a history stored only on it goes with it unless it is backed up. Auto-delete settings can also remove older entries after a set period, without you doing anything.
Many people discovered this only when they went looking for an old trip and found a few months of history where there used to be years.
Make a copy you control
- Export now. Use the Timeline export on your phone. It produces a JSON file of your history.
- Store it somewhere you trust. A computer, an external drive, encrypted storage. It is a sensitive file: it shows where you live and work.
- Check the auto-delete setting. Decide deliberately how long Google keeps history on your device.
- Repeat. An export is a snapshot. Do it again every few months.
Turn the file into a map
A backup you never open is easy to forget. FOG can import the Timeline export, and GPX files from watches and other apps, and turn them into one map: the world under fog, cleared wherever you have been. It runs entirely on your phone and uploads nothing.
From then on FOG keeps recording on its own, in the background, and keeps the trail on the device. Its Settings has an export backup option that writes the whole trail as a GPX file, the standard format that almost any mapping tool reads. Back that up too: FOG has no cloud, so the backup is the copy that survives the phone.
Privacy, honestly
Any location record is sensitive. Keep backups somewhere private, think twice before uploading them to online converters, and delete what you do not want to keep. FOG has no account and no servers that hold your data, so there is nothing to breach on our side; your own copies are yours to look after.
About FOG
Exploring is free. FOG Unlimited is one purchase that adds history import, the higher ranks and every character path. No subscription. It is a phone app, on iOS and Android.
Questions people actually ask
Where is my Google location history stored now?
For most people, on their phone rather than in a web account. That makes regular exports important if you want to keep it.
How do I keep a permanent copy?
Export it from your phone regularly and store the file somewhere private. You can also import it into FOG, which keeps it on your phone as a map and can export a GPX backup.
Does FOG store my history in the cloud?
No. FOG has no account and no cloud. Use its GPX export to make your own backup.
Start with a dark map.
FOG is free to explore. No account, no subscription, and your map never leaves your phone.
free to explore · one purchase unlocks everything · never a subscription