Google have recently announced an update to Google Maps that finally brings the Timeline feature to iOS devices. The feature allows you to track in great detail where you’ve been, aside from keeping track on where you are throughout the day it is a handy tool if you’re visiting somewhere you don’t know the area very well. The app allows you to ‘favorite’ specific places on the Timeline and also allows you to share your location via text message or on some social media platforms. 

To be able to use the Timeline feature you must have the ‘Google Maps’ app downloaded onto your device and then once downloaded you must log in with your Google account on the app, then you can access all of Google Maps’ new features. 

It’s a feature that Android users already have and iOS users have been waiting to try it since 2015. The exception for this is if they were using it on the web just not on their phones.

The feature on iOS can be accessed from the app’s main menu, or from the place cards of previously visited destinations. Each stop is arranged in linear order with each stop including details like the distance between each stop and the transport used. Users can edit the locations and activities to be more precise, for example, if they were kayaking or hiking or the name of the location.

Users can also choose if they want to be a sent monthly summary email of where they’ve been in the previous month, these emails would include place cards of the locations and the dates of past visits. You can also view your entire user history on the Google Maps app. Google says that the Timeline can be useful for remembering discoveries or figuring out when a particular errand was done.

Google addresses privacy concerns by letting users delete single or multiple days or remove their entire history. You can also turn the location services off on the app so that you don’t get tracked if you go into your settings and change ‘allow location access’ to never, this means that Google Maps won’t track where you’ve been on the Timeline feature. 

The iOS timeline was released earlier this week but may not be immediately accessible to all users.