What you must know
- Some customers are seeing their Google Maps Timeline historical past vanish with out warning.
- The problem is blowing up on Reddit, with extra customers confirming their knowledge is lacking.
- Some affected customers can’t entry their cloud backups both, making issues even worse.
- It’s potential that Google Maps’ shift to on-device storage is behind the issue.
Some Google Maps customers are operating right into a bizarre challenge the place their total Timeline historical past is disappearing. Nobody’s positive why, however many suspect it has one thing to do with Google’s latest transfer to retailer location historical past straight on units as an alternative of within the cloud.
Google Maps’ Timeline function has undergone a significant shift in the way it handles location historical past. For years, all that knowledge was saved centrally, tied to your account. However beginning in December of final yr, Google made a giant change, which means your motion historical past now stays in your cellphone as an alternative of Google’s servers.
The corporate is giving customers till June 9, 2025, to modify over to on-device location historical past. After that, something nonetheless saved within the cloud will probably be gone for good.
Google’s push to resolve what to do with years of location historical past left quite a lot of customers sweating. With a deadline looming, individuals had to determine find out how to save their knowledge earlier than it was too late. Now, some customers are discovering their Timeline historical past has vanished into skinny air even earlier than the deadline arrives.
Customers are sounding the alarm on Reddit (1, 2) about disappearing Google Maps Timeline knowledge, and the difficulty is selecting up steam, as noticed by 9to5Google. In simply the previous day, tons of individuals have chimed in, saying their Timeline historical past has mysteriously vanished too.
Persons are reporting that years of their location historical past have out of the blue vanished and not using a hint. Despite the fact that their Timeline is enabled, Google Maps is exhibiting the identical irritating message throughout the board: “No visits for today.”
To make issues worse, some customers can’t even entry their cloud backups anymore.
Some are pointing fingers at Google Maps’ shift to maneuver location historical past from the cloud to your machine because the possible offender. The change was presupposed to beef up privateness, however it is perhaps inflicting this mess as an alternative.
Thus far, the issue hasn’t popped up on our units, which suggests it may not be hitting everybody. We’ve reached out to Google for solutions and can replace this story as quickly as we hear again.