aurel007 So looks like Timeline data will be deleted sometime around the beginning of December 2024 and your app will try to store Timeline data on your device automatically after then or your data risks deletion. I received emails from location-history-noreply@google.com on June 12, 2024 and July 13, 2024 with the following info and a link to set up the new settings:

You previously turned on the Timeline setting—formerly called Location History —which helps you go back in time and remember where you’ve been. With Timeline, your visits and routes are automatically saved to a map on each of your devices.
Timeline is changing and will now be created on your device. As part of this, you'll need to choose settings for your data by December 8, 2024 to avoid losing visits and routes.

How it works
Like before, your devices will continue to save your visits in Timeline when this setting is on. But starting today, if you're signed in on multiple smartphones, each device will save new visits on its own Timeline.

What you need to do
If you’d like to keep your saved visits and routes, choose your settings on your preferred smartphone by December 8, 2024. (You may first need to update the Google Maps app.)
After you do this, you’ll only be able to use Timeline in the app.
If you take no action, you may lose data. Google will try moving up to 90 days of Timeline data to the first signed-in device you use after December 8, 2024. Your older data will be deleted. Timeline will also remain on for your account, and your devices will continue saving new visits. Your visits and routes older than 3 months will be auto-deleted.
Review & choose settings
If you don’t want any Timelines on your devices, you can turn off this setting and delete your data in Activity controls.

Your Timeline data
3
Countries/​Regions
247
Cities
1923
Places
Go to your Timeline

About Timeline
Timeline helps you go back in time, and remember where you've been, by automatically saving your visits and routes to a map on each of your devices. To learn more about Timeline, visit the Help Center.

When I go to "Your Timeline" in the Google Maps app I indeed see the cloud icon at the top right which if selected lets me toggle on encrypted backups to Google servers. This indicates my Timeline data has been successfully migrated.

More info about the migration process can be found here including that you need to update your Google Maps app to the latest version: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/14169818?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&oco=1

Let us know once you make the (eventually mandatory) change to device Timeline storage and let us know if it still logs your location on your Grapheme OS device. If not, we may have isolated where the issue is.

My only other thought is that toggling/refreshing settings sometimes solves problems (e.g. logging in and out of Google on your device, deleting cache/data, etc). I'll refrain from this troubleshooting for now as there's many possibilities and we may be close to an answer.

      Just reporting in that I'm having the same issue; gave all permissions to the apps mentioned, Timeline is saying that its on but no history is being recorded. Tried with my normal setup and did a fresh reinstall to see if that would fix anything and it didn't

      I do wonder if starting from a stock OS backup is important. Since I have to reset to stock anyway for a trade-in, I'm going to give that a try and see if that does anything when I get my new phone.

      10 days later

      Reporting back after I got my new phone and having access to a GOS and a stock OS device at the same time. I was able to get Timeline to work on Graphene OS. Devices are a Pixel 8 Pro on stock and a Pixel 9 Pro running up-to-date GOS

      On fresh reboot, I installed Google Play Services and gave it the following permissions:

      • Location (Precise, all the time)
      • Nearby Devices
      • Network
      • Notifications
      • Physical Activity
      • Sensors

      I then installed Google Maps and gave it the following permissions

      • Location (Precise, all the time)
      • Nearby devices
      • Network
      • Notification
      • Physical activity
      • Sensors

      I also made the changes to "location requests to OS", location accuracy, and wifi/bluetooth scanning, as well as disabling battery optimization

      After this, I enabled timeline and downloaded my stock OS backup, noticed that timeline wasn't working, and rebooted. I briefly turned on exploit compatibility for both apps and didn't see an immediate change, so I turned it off.

      When I woke up I saw that Timeline on my GOS Pixel 9 was working properly. I carried both phones side by side so I could compare and they both recorded similar activity, so I think the issue is fixed. If I had to guess, it was based off backup from stock device or the physical activity and nearby devices permissions, or maybe it needed exploit compatibility mode disabled for a bit to process. One thing weird I did notice was when I downloaded my original GOS Timeline backup (the one converted from Location History) it seemed like that it had been recording trips on the GOS device, even when GOS was unable to display them.

      It does seem like GOS timeline is a little bit less accurate, especially when walking and driving, but I'll keep carrying them side by side for a few days to see if i notice anything else.

      Hope this helps!

        deer

        1. By "stock OS backup" do you mean your Google Timeline cloud backup?
        2. Is all this after you migrated you Google Timeline data to your device (rather than Google cloud) as described in above posts on this thread? E.g. do you have the cloud backup icon in the top right when you go to Google Maps ->Your Timeline?
        3. Since you're using two phones at the same time (one stock and one Graphene OS) I just want to make sure its not just the stock phone recording data and syncing with your Graphene OS phone. Does the Graphene OS phone continue to log location history when the stock OS phone is off?
        • deer replied to this.

            safeandsecure8373

            1. Yeah, the backups are per-device, but you can download another device's backup to migrate the history over.
            2. Yep! Got the email to migrate over a while ago and both devices (as well as my original GOS install where I noticed the problem) have had the cloud icon.
            3. They are not syncing with each other, I forgot one of my phones today and the timeline history for it just shows it at home all day, vs my day at work on my GOS phone
              9 days later
              7 days later
              2 months later

              justaregulareverydaynormaluser Not yet. Timeline still not logging history for me. In fact, when I uninstalled the Google Maps app and reinstalled it and then tried to restore my encrypted cloud backup to my device it restored nothing and my entire backup history was deleted.

                15 days later

                safeandsecure8373
                I also received the email announcing that my timeline data will be deleted by 18th May 2025, so it's a question of time when I am also not able to use that feature anymore.

                It seems that the timeline/local location history features depends on GMS (Google Mobile Services), see https://thebinaryhick.blog/2024/06/28/the-green-look-back-androids-on-device-location-history/ i.e. it would need to be re-implemented in the sanboxed Google Play Services layer.

                I tested it with an older device and no location history gets recorded at all - threfore also nothing is shown in Google Maps. @safeandsecure8373 Do you have any recordings in /data/data/com.google.android.gms or the config file ULR_USER_PREFS.xml in shared_prefs?

                    a month later

                    aurel007 I'm not a very technical user

                    Only file in /data/data/com.google.android.gms is one called "gmsnet2.jpg" in "files" and nothing in "cache"
                    I can't find ULR_USER_PREFS.xml in shared_prefs with a search of the devices files. You'd need to direct me to it.