Your smartphone has a GPS chip that can pinpoint your location to the nearest 4 meters, and this small device stays in your pocket or purse all day. Combine those two facts and you start to realize that your phone knows where you’ve been every moment that’s passed since you’ve owned it.
This may sound a little scary to some, but rest assured, this information will not be recorded unless you explicitly choose to enable location tracking. For those comfortable with this concept, there’s a simple way to view and manage your location history, so you’ll always know where you were on a given day.
Enables location history
As I mentioned, Android doesn’t keep a record of your location history by default. There are prompts that appear when you first log in to your device, however, if you’ve already enabled location history, you can skip to the next section.
If you haven’t turned on Location History yet and want to start recording where you’ve been, start by opening the Google app. From here, choose the “Settings” entry in the page navigation menu and select “Google Activity Controls”.
Next, select the “Google Location History” entry on the following screen. From here, enable the overall service via the switch at the top of the screen, then make sure to enable the service for the device you’re using. From now on, your device will keep detailed records of all the places you visit, and only you will have access to this information.
Viewing location history
Once your device has accumulated some location history, you can access it at any time by opening the Google Maps app. From here, go to the page navigation menu and select “Your Timeline” where you’ll see today’s location data.
From here, you can tap the month at the top of the screen to reveal the calendar view, where you can choose any date to see where you’ve been. Once you select a date, you can swipe down to expand the map view or swipe up to expand the list view.
From here, you can tap the entry if you want to see more details or delete this location from your history. If you have geotag features enabled in your camera app, you can even view photos you’ve taken at specific locations on your timeline.
