Timeline Visualizer setup, explained.

Transcript

Timeline Visualizer takes the Timeline dot json file that Google Maps lets you export, and turns a year of your own movement into an animated video. The important part is where that happens: everything renders on your device, and your location history is never uploaded anywhere. It picked up four hundred forty one stars in a single day on GitHub's trending page. Here's how to set it up. First you need the Timeline file itself, and this is the step that trips people up, because on Android it is no longer inside Google Maps at all. Open your phone Settings, go to Location, then Location services, then Timeline, then Export Timeline data. Save it somewhere you can find again, like Downloads. On iPhone the path stays inside Google Maps: profile picture, Settings, Personal content, Export Timeline data. Next, the app. On Android it is not on the Play Store yet, so you download the A P K straight from the project's releases page. It's about two point eight megabytes. Android will almost certainly block the first attempt: choose Settings, allow your browser to install unknown apps, then go back and try again. You can turn that permission straight back off afterwards. It needs Android eight point zero or newer. On iPhone there's no App Store build, but there is a web app that installs nothing at all. Open it in Safari, choose your Timeline file, pick a date range, preview the journey, and create the video. It needs Safari sixteen point four or newer, and the tab has to stay open while it renders. There's also a desktop Python version, which is the right choice if you want this in a script. Install the requirements with pip, then run visualizer dot p y, pointing it at your Timeline file and the year you want. The camera movement flag takes fixed, steady, or dynamic. The long trip compression flag bends the animation timing so a two week road trip doesn't spend most of the video on one motorway, and it never changes the actual route. Three things before you rely on it. Android warning you about installing outside the Play Store is expected for a directly distributed app. The privacy claim has one honest asterisk: your JSON never moves, but CARTO serves the map tiles, so it does learn which areas you rendered. And videos longer than sixty seconds cost real time and storage, so the app warns you first. That's the setup.