How to deactivate your Google location history

Google Maps has introduced many innovative features over the years, from 3D driving directions to showing how busy a business is. One particular feature is more controversial: your location timeline, which records everywhere you’ve traveled for later reference. As useful as this option can be, perhaps to help you remember the name of a restaurant you came across a long time ago, it can also feel like an invasion of privacy.

For many people, having a log of your location constantly running in the background is too much like Big Brother. If this data fell into the wrong hands, someone could learn a lot about you. It’s worth noting that Google has moved from storing your location history in the cloud to storing it locally on your device unless you make a manual backup, but the desire to stop one of the many ways you’re tracked is still understandable. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn off Google’s location history feature.

You can globally turn off your Google Maps timeline using the location settings in the My Google Activity panel. However, since the timeline data comes from your phone and can only be viewed there, you may want to change these settings from your phone for completeness.

These settings are device specific, so if you also use Maps on a tablet or second phone, you’ll need to start the process again here. If you ever want to turn it back on, follow the same instructions, but select To light up rather during the last step.

1. Open it Google Maps app, then tap your profile picture located on the right side of the search bar.

2. Select Your timeline.

3. Hit it three points in the upper right corner, then choose Location and privacy settings.

4. Select Chronology.

5. From the drop-down menu, select Turn off stop using the feature but keep existing data, or Disable and delete activity to also clear all historical data.

If you prefer to keep recent locations accessible for a while but clean them occasionally, you can manage your auto-delete settings in this same menu. Scroll down to the section titled Automatic deletion and select Choose an automatic deletion option. In the drop-down list, indicate whether you want to delete activities prior to three, 18Or 36 months. Also on this page you will see some Subparameters who control other ways in which this data can be used.

Other pages visited along this path offer options for finer control. On the main Chronology page, press the Backup (cloud) at the top to enable or disable an encrypted backup of your device’s Timeline data to your Google account. Use the Pencil icon at the bottom right to edit or delete a given day. On the Location and Privacy page, you can Export timeline data to save it to another device, or Delete a data range from the timeline if you need to clean a lot.