How to: Layering Google Maps timeline

[Stphn]

Do you want to create something awesome like this?

Personally I love Google Maps timeline, as it is accurately showing where I have been during my travels.

But I was missing the layering of multiple days so I could see which areas I have covered and which not.

It is not straight forward, but I have found such opportunity on a support ticket of Google. (https://support.google.com/maps/thread/13214681?hl=en)

I would like to share that here in a simple step-by-step guide, so you could do the same!

Step 1: Go to your timeline by clicking the link https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

Step 2: Choose the dates you want to layer, and export every single day by clicking the gear button right bottom of the timeline screen → “Export this day to KML”. (a KML file will be created for every day)

Step 3: Go to Google My Maps by clicking the link https://www.google.com/maps/d/ and click on the button “Create a new map”

Step 4: Create a layer for each day and import one KML file you created in step 2, and do this for each layer.

Et voila! You have created your awesome map! You can even click every line to see when it was recorded and which mode of transportation.

Have fun with it! Hope this would be standard in the timeline function though one day.

Regards,

Stephen

[C_T]

An interesting and useful tip @Stphn

[Stphn]

Thanks @C_T !

[JanVanHaver]

Great find @Stphn ! And a nice illustration of the fact that there is sometimes a wide gap between technically possible and user-friendly

[Stphn]

Exactly @JanVanHaver ! Thanks!

[Aquakiwi]

Thanks this is great, disappointing that they have a limit of 10, so if you do a two week holiday, and want to show it all, you can only show 10 days.

Would be more user friendly if they just let you select a date range, and not limit it to 10. So you can select a whole month in the out of the box, so 28 to 31 days depending on month and year, but to layer your own can only do 10.

They are improving things all the time, so in time maybe will be able to layer more than 10.

Thanks again very helpful and easy to follow instructions.

[HOGHank]

This was an excellent and easy-to-follow tip, Thanks!!

Got to see our dream vacation on a map

[MysticHDX]

Thank you so much Steven. I just completed a week-long roadtrip and, naturally, now want to view the entire trip on one map. Your instructions were spot on, and like you said, hopefully one day Google’s developers will snap to and add multi-day maps in their Timeline section. Cheers!

[Noyabronok]

You can merge KML files, for example here: https://kmlmerger.com/

Then you only need one layer

By the way, there are other applications that can view KML files, for example this extension for VS Code
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RandomFractalsInc.geo-data-viewer

Here’s my result for a 5 week vacation using the two steps above:

[JimScott]

This is brilliant, thank you so much for going to the trouble posting it.

[richardfromtoronto]

thank you! this helped a lot