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by Aachen 593 days ago
I didn't even know Google had this feature until people complained about it tracking you by default. I've always used OsmAnd for navigation and had automatic trip recording turned on as a gimmick, on rare occasions it would be interesting to look back where I went wrong and got rerouted or where the new road runs exactly to put it on OpenStreetMap. Now, with also some ten years of history, it actually makes for an exceedingly interesting plot of where I've been (around town as well as globally). I'm surprised OsmAnd manages to render millions upon millions of line segments from all the gpx files in a single map view

Anyway, roundabout way of saying: self-"hosting" years of location history works for me directly on my phone, no first- or third-party service needed. If you don't need a big tech product that uploads everyone's location to generate traffic info, it's going to be a learning curve (it's chock full of features, so getting around the UI can be tricky) but I can recommend OsmAnd. Also hearing good stories of OrganicMaps but don't know if they do gpx tracking or displaying

Importing should be a matter of figuring out how to convert whatever format Google uses into GPX files, which are just XML files with coordinates and timestamps in them. I'm confident someone will have made a converter given how ubiquitous as well as simple gpx is, if this is the route you want to go or try

1 comments

Thanks for the tip about OsmAnd! Google maps is one of the last Google services I use because for some reason Apple Maps doesn’t support directions/navigation in the country I live in even though it has full maps and even traffic. Just installed the iOS app and while it does look like the UI will take a little getting used to, this looks like a solid option!
Oh, on iOS the app is quite different afaik (and, when I last used it, much more limited). I somehow was expecting an Android device, sorry. There may be better options for iOS (though my impression is that most FOSS mobile things happen on Android)