Google Takeout Location History (googletakeout)

This format can...

  • read waypoints

  • read tracks

Google gives you two options to download your location history: In Google Maps, you can go into your Timeline and download your location history a day at a time as KML files. Or, in Google Takeout, you can download all of your location history all at once as a ZIP of JSON files, one for each month.

The "googletakeout" GPSBabel format will process the location history JSON files. It can operate on individual JSON files, the folders in the ZIP that contain a year's worth of data, or the entire location history at once.

There is no official documentation from Google for this format, however, a volunteer is maintaining a schema at locationhistoryformat.com .

To obtain your Google Takeout History:

  • Go to takeout.google.com

  • Click on "Deselect all"

  • Scroll down to "Location History" and check the box

  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Next step"

  • Click on "Create export"

In a little while, you will receive an email to download your location history, which will be one or more zipfiles. Unzip everything into the same folder. Your history will be in the folder "Takeout/Location History/Semantic Location History" within this folder.

Example 3.20. Convert entire location history to a single GPX file

gpsbabel -i googletakeout -f "Semantic Location History" -o gpx -F all.gpx


Example 3.21. Convert a single years' location history to GPX

gpsbabel -i googletakeout -f "Semantic Location History/2022" -o gpx -F 2022.gpx


Example 3.22. Convert a single months' location history to GPX

gpsbabel -i googletakeout -f "Semantic Location History/2023/2023_MARCH.json" -o gpx -F 2023-03.gpx