Google Mapswhich on February 8th will be 20 years since it began its journey, it has another important date marked on the 2025 calendar for users in Spain. It is about the May 18and that will be the day when, if you do not take the necessary measures before, you will lose all your location history stored over the years with no way to recover it.
Why this drastic change? Location history, which Google has called for some time Chronologyhas always been one of the most controversial aspects of the app in relation to user privacy. Logical, since it means that for years Google has stored on its servers all the places a person with Google Maps on your mobilewhich are the vast majority. Over time, the company added options to provide the user with greater control over the data that Maps stores. Thus, options were added to automatically delete them from time to time, an incognito mode for Maps and even the default chronology was deactivated.
The change that is coming now, and that has already been deployed in other countries such as the United States, is that the timeline is no longer stored in the cloud and is now stored on the device itself. In recent days you may have seen a notification on your mobile indicating changes that you must make in Google Maps before the May 18 deadline, which is due to this decision.
When the timeline is no longer saved in the cloud, Google will proceed to delete the location history information that it has stored until now and gives a few months of margin so that the user can keep itdownloading it to your device, if you don’t want it to disappear.
How to configure Maps so that Google does not delete your timeline forever
To avoid losing it, you must follow these steps:
- Open Google Maps on your mobile. This change must be made in the mobile app. In the web version, a notification appears informing you of the change and sends you to the app to make the adjustments.
- You will see the notice that says ‘The chronology is going to change. Do you want to keep your visits?’ Tap on the button ‘Choose settings’ that appears after the message. Alternatively, you can also access these options by clicking on your profile picture and then in ‘Your chronology’.
- Read the information on the new panel. Tells you that your timeline is now saved on your device and to avoid losing saved data, you should review your settings before May 18, 2025. Tap ‘Following’.
- Set your preferences in the menu ‘Choose your settings’. Scroll down and, after Google’s explanations about this change, in the section ‘How long do you want to keep your timeline data?’ you can choose between ‘Keep until deleted’ or select if you want them to be automatically deleted within a period of 3, 18 or 36 months.
- In the section ‘Keep timeline on?’indicates the download size of the data stored by Google to your device. You can choose between ‘Deactivate’ either ‘Keep timeline on’. With this last option, the information will be downloaded to your mobile phone, where the new data generated from now on will be saved.
- After this choice, a new screen gives you the choice if you want your information to be used to calculate the effectiveness of the ads based on the timeline. Select ‘Yeah’ either ‘No’ and then ‘Made’. to finish the configuration.
You must keep in mind that, in the web version of Google Mapsthe timeline will no longer be available starting May 18 and It can only be consulted in the app from that date.