Google Maps Timeline Alternatives: 5 Apps

For about a decade, Google quietly kept a map of everywhere you had been. If you had Location History switched on, Timeline recorded your movements, sorted them into trips and places, and let you scroll back through years of your own life from any browser.

That version is gone. Google announced in 2023 that Timeline would move from its servers onto your phone, discontinued the web version, and gave people roughly six months from their individual notification to migrate. The commonly cited cut-off for cloud data was 9 June 2025. Anything left on Google's servers after that was deleted.

Two details are what turned this from a policy change into a lot of angry forum threads. First, the migration downloaded only the most recent three months of history to your device by default. Everything older was not moved, it was dropped. Second, in March 2025 a bug wiped Timelines for an unknown number of people who had done nothing wrong, and only those who had switched on the optional encrypted cloud backup could restore anything. For some of them, even that failed.

So if you are here because your Timeline is thinner than it used to be, or because you no longer trust it to still exist next year, that is a reasonable place to be. Here is what to do about it.

Before you install anything: two settings

These take four minutes and they matter more than which app you pick.

One: turn on encrypted backup. In Google Maps, open your Timeline, and look for the cloud icon or the backup option in Timeline settings. This stores an encrypted copy on Google's servers that Google says it cannot read. It is opt-in, it is off for a lot of people who assume it is on, and it is the only thing standing between a lost phone and a lost decade. One warning worth knowing in advance: the backup is tied to the device that encrypted it, and people have found themselves locked out of their own restore after switching phones. Do not treat it as a complete safety net.

Two: export what you have, and know that Takeout no longer does this. This is the part that catches everyone. Because Timeline data is no longer stored on Google's servers, it is no longer included in Google Takeout. An export that used to be a two-minute web job now has to be done on the phone itself, through your Location or Timeline settings, and it produces JSON. If you have been assuming your yearly Takeout archive contains your location history, open it and check. It probably does not.

Do those two things first. Then decide whether you actually want to leave.

The alternatives

1. Google Timeline itself, configured properly

Worth listing honestly, because for a lot of people the right answer is "fix the thing you already have". On-device Timeline still records automatically, still recognises places and trip types, and still costs nothing. With encrypted backup switched on and a periodic manual export, it does the job it always did.

Best for: anyone whose complaint is the data loss rather than Google itself. The trade-off: no web access, the history is tied to a device, and you are trusting the same company that already deleted a lot of people's data once.

2. Dawarich

The most direct replacement, and the one the self-hosting community has settled on. Open source, with an interactive map, date filtering, trips and statistics, and importers for GPX, GeoJSON and KML, including Google's own export format. You can run it on your own server, or pay for Dawarich Cloud if you want the software without the sysadmin work. Cloud pricing started around €50 a year for the limited tier and roughly €120 a year for the full one at the time of writing, so check the current numbers.

It needs a companion app on your phone to actually send location data. Its own apps work, and so do OwnTracks, Overland, GPSLogger and Home Assistant.

Best for: people who want the full Timeline experience with the data in a database they control. The trade-off: self-hosting is real work, and the cloud version costs more per year than most map subscriptions.

3. OwnTracks

The original of the category and still the most dependable piece of the stack. Open source, well established, and narrowly focused: it records where you are and sends it to a server you own. That is the whole product.

Best for: being the reliable recorder underneath something else, usually Dawarich or Home Assistant. The trade-off: there is no real interface for browsing your own history. On its own it gives you data, not a timeline.

4. Arc Timeline

The best option on iOS if you do not want to run a server. It records visits and trips automatically, learns and names your regular places, and distinguishes between walking, running, cycling, driving, trains and a long list of others. Everything stays on the device, with optional backup to your own iCloud account, no sign-up required, and export to JSON whenever you want.

Pricing at the time of writing was roughly $4.99 monthly, $44.99 yearly, or a one-time lifetime purchase, but check the store.

Best for: iPhone users who want Timeline's convenience without Google. The trade-off: iOS only, and it is a paid app in a space where the incumbent was free.

5. Fogbreaker (ours)

The honest positioning, stated up front because this one needs it more than any other post we have written: we are not a location-history archive and we cannot import your Google Timeline. If what you want is your past back, or a searchable diary of everywhere you have driven since 2016, nothing on this page does that except a Google export you already made. We are not a substitute for it, and if you install us expecting your history to appear, you will be disappointed.

What we do is the forward-looking half of the same idea. Your city starts hidden under fog, walking is the only thing that clears it, and the map builds from the day you start rather than from your archive. The difference in feel is bigger than it sounds: Timeline is a record that happens to you passively, and this is something you deliberately fill in. There are also XP, levels, daily streaks and a friend leaderboard on top, because the point is to get you walking somewhere new rather than to document the same commute more accurately.

We only track walking. Drives, flights and train journeys are not what this is for, which is either the feature you wanted or a dealbreaker, depending on why you came here.

Best for: people whose real answer to "why do I want a location history" was "I want to see everywhere I have walked". The trade-off: starts empty, no import, walking only, not a diary. Free on iOS and Android, with optional in-app purchases that are never required.

On the data question, since it is the whole reason this post exists: Fogbreaker is built by Teratis Solutions GmbH, a German company. Your data sits on servers in the EU, it is GDPR compliant, we do not sell it or share it with third parties for advertising, and you can delete your account and everything in it yourself at any time. The longer version is in what walking apps know about you.

Quick comparison

So which one

• You just want your history to stop disappearing. Google Timeline with encrypted backup on, plus a manual export twice a year. Do this today whatever else you decide.
• You want to own the data outright and you run a server. Dawarich, with OwnTracks feeding it.
• You want that without the sysadmin work. Dawarich Cloud.
• You are on iPhone and want it to just work. Arc Timeline.
• What you actually wanted was a map of everywhere you have walked. Fogbreaker, or one of the other approaches in how to see a map of everywhere you have walked.

One thing worth sitting with before you migrate anything. A lot of the grief about the Timeline change was not really about the feature. It was about discovering that a decade of your own life was being held somewhere you did not control, on terms you had not read, and that it could vanish on a schedule somebody else set. That is worth carrying into whatever you pick next. Ask where the data lives, ask whether you can export it, and ask what happens to it if the company is sold. We wrote about how the rest of the category answers those questions in what walking apps know about you, and about the fog-of-war approach to the same problem in Fog of World alternatives.