Did Google just officially document the format?

[mholt]

See this page: https://developers.google.com/data-portability/schema-reference/location_history

[CarlosBergillos]

Oh super interesting thanks for sharing! I didn't know about this Data Portability API. If I understand it correctly it can potentially allow applications to access location history data exports programatically which can open many possibilities.

And yeah, it seems this page is documenting very similar data (if not the same).

Has anyone used this API and can confirm that the data obtained is the same files & structure as when exporting through Google Takeout?

The linked documentation seems quite incomplete and does not seem like it can replace this project yet. But I'll keep an eye on it!

And in any case I guess it would be useful if at least we mention it and provide a link to it in our page.

[mholt]

It was news to me too; I accidentally found it by trying to type your site in my browser but because of a typo did a search instead, and that was one of the top results.

It's clearly not a replacement for your site in its current form. I will say, though, having downloaded my Takeout today for the first time in a year or so, I saw a new field, deviceTimestamp -- next to serverTimestamp and timestamp and I'm like, great, what's the difference? Well now we know: "Timestamp at which the device uploaded the location batch containing this record."

It's interesting to me that they're recording how long it takes to upload the data to their service (source+dest timestamps); I wonder what they're using the timing information for.

But as far as I know, this page is accurate at least of what it contains so far. I haven't explored the rest of the API. Based on the left-hand nav, this is the only really interesting page to me right now.

Anyway, thanks for your site. I've been using it for a couple years now to build Timelinize.

What are you working on that motivated you to create this site?

[hossain-khan]

Good find! yeah. As you mentioned, it's definitely not a 1-to-1 replacement. Many of the object definitions are missing there. May be some docs can be ported if it makes sense.

I did bump into timelinize when I was googling how to map the takeout data. Sounds cool 👍🏽

[mholt]

Anyway, just wanted to share so if you want you can incorporate some of the info or just link to the page so you don't have to keep updating as much.

(If you want an early dev preview of Timelinize, let me know btw!)

[CarlosBergillos]

Did they remove the page already? The link doesn't work currently and I can't seem to find it aymore 😅 There was useful info there yeah hah

Anyway, thanks for your site. I've been using it for a couple years now to build Timelinize.

What are you working on that motivated you to create this site?

@mholt

And oh, sorry I forgot to reply to this! I'm happy to hear you find this project useful! Good luck with Timelinize! And this project started from my frustratiion of not having official documentation when trying to analyze my data for personal purposes. I think this data has a lot of potential and I've created a bunch of private scripts and experiments to find insights and create images with my data (e.g. Visualizing My Location History), but nothing public or professional.

[mholt]

Did they remove the page already? The link doesn't work currently and I can't seem to find it aymore 😅

Oh yikes, yeah it's gone...

I think this data has a lot of potential and I've created a bunch of private scripts and experiments to find insights and create images with my data (e.g. Visualizing My Location History), but nothing public or professional.

That's a very cool project!