Losing 7 Years of Timeline History on Google Maps - A Big Miss for Me

Google Maps tips & tricks
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Hi Local Guides,

For me, one of the best features on Google Maps is the Timeline history.
It always amazed me to see where I had been, how many times I visited a place, and to relive memories of old trips and special days.

Sometimes just scrolling through my Timeline brought back wonderful experiences and stories from the past.

Recently, Google changed how Timeline works. Everyone’s history before March 2025 was deleted after a notification and an option to back up the data was given. From now, we can only see our visit history after March 2025.

Does this happened to everyone?:thinking:

What I feel sad about is that I lost almost 7 years of my travel history directly inside Maps. I used to open it often, not just for data, but to recall the memories of the places I visited.

Now, seeing a blank Timeline before March 2025 feels like a huge missing part of my journey.

I understand storage and privacy reasons might be behind this, but personally, I think the Timeline was more than just data, it was a diary of our movements and moments.

Surprisingly, I can still see my Timeline for 26/02/2025 :grin:.
Looks like Google “forgot” to delete that date :face_with_monocle:.

Screenshot_20250820_150413_Maps
Screenshot_20250820_150413_Maps1002×1044 37.1 KB

What do you think?

Do you also feel the same loss of memories when opening your Timeline now?

Should Google Map have kept an option for us to continue accessing older history inside Maps, instead of wiping it away completely?

What’s your favourite feature in Google Map?

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Location History Disappeared: Google bug (prior to March 2, 2025)
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The change was to ensure more privacy by moving this sensitive data from Google servers to our devices. We were asked to actively select backing up this data. Maybe you didn’t.

Or maybe you had more devices tracking you or you got a new phone and forgot to backup your timeline data and restore your timeline data from the cloud onti your new device.

Read more here

2 Likes
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Hello @MAP333,

sorry to hear you lost your timeline, but I can scroll back a longer time. My understanding, it was only removed from the desktop (that is from the server) and locally stored on our mobile apps. As @MortenCopenhagen hinted, you might have made a mistake, when this change happened.

However for me, this was never an issue. Since almost 20 years ago, I am GEO tagging all my digital photos and I have my own private timeline.

As long, I could see Google’s timeline on the desktop, it was just an additional “nice to have feature”, since it not only showed the positions of my photos, but also all tracks at all times.

Now, on the mobile, I rarely ever open the timeline, since it the worst performing of all parts of the Maps app and the tiny display is almost useless to show longer tracks.

1 Like
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Yes, I also received that backup notification, but unfortunately, I didn’t back it up.

My mistake. I thought there would still be an option to retrieve it later.
Anyway, it feels like a big loss now whenever I check my Timeline before March 2025.

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Yes @WilfriedB, I didn’t back it up. I’ve been using Google Maps on my smartphone, not just the browser, and still lost all my history.

As you mentioned, geotagging may help to remember the places we visited. For you, it was just a nice extra feature, but for me, the timeline was something special. It helped me relive memories and I updated it regularly.

Anyway, now I understand my mistake, and I’ll make sure to back it up if I ever get such an option again.

1 Like
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Please also read the two links I shared. Maybe there is hope.