Google Maps glitch is purging Timeline data — what we know
Have you suddenly found that your Google Maps Timeline has vanished? Well, you’re not alone.
There have been countless reports of Timelines vanishing, and it’s not clear if this is a temporary glitch or if all that Timeline data has been lost for good.
As spotted by 9to5Google, some users have noticed that the Timeline menu in the Google Maps app now says, “No visits for this day.” Apparently, this message appears every day they check, with one Reddit user claiming that the last three-plus years of Timeline history have vanished overnight. Worse still, the app isn’t registering any new Timeline activity either.
Some of you may wonder whether this is related to the recent Timeline purge implemented by Google. Last year, users were warned to migrate Timeline history onto their devices rather than the cloud because Google would delete everything.
However, affected users say that they have already done this and have been seeing their timeline history without issue following Google’s December deadline. In fact, users can see that they have a local backup of their Timeline data but can’t seem to do anything with it. All they have is the option to delete it, which is the last thing anyone wants.
Users haven’t accidentally switched on auto-delete either, so the situation is confusing — and irritating.
What’s causing the issue?
The big problem here is that nobody knows what has caused this problem. One user contacted Google support and was told the issue was related to a recent Google One update. Obviously, this has been met with skepticism since the Google Maps Timeline feature has nothing to do with Google One — especially now that it’s stored locally.
Other users have spotted that recent backups still exist, but others’s backups seem to have been overwritten after the bug started. Likewise a couple of commenters have mentioned clearing their Google Maps cache has seemingly fixed the problem, but others have not been so lucky.
Combine all this with the fact that the bug doesn’t seem to universally affect people, and the whole situation seems to be a complete mess.
Personally, I’m not a big Timeline user and don’t like the idea of Google Maps keeping any kind of long term record of where I’ve been. But there are plenty of people out there that actively use this feature. The fact that these people have seemingly had all that saved information purged as the result of a glitch must feel absolutely devastating — and I hope they get everything back.
Assuming, of course, that Google can fix the problem and somehow restore local backups that may have been purged.
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