If you read my last blog, you know that Google is no longer keeping your location history on their servers as of May 2025. This got me thinking so I downloaded my entire Timeline (previously called location history) to my computer. It went all the way back to 2019. Wow, that's a lot of location history.
This is very valuable information for forensic analysis of phone locations.
Downloading your timeline is simple. On your Android phone go to device Settings > Location > Location Services > Timeline > "Export Timeline data" button".
The timeline file is in the Json format. It is text readable so you can view it from your browser or any text app like Notepad or WordPad. However, it is not something you can easily search or map or manipulate.
One of the data points can look like the following:
"startTime": "2024-06-12T17:38:22.000-04:00",
"endTime": "2024-06-12T18:34:42.000-04:00",
"startTimeTimezoneUtcOffsetMinutes": -240,
"endTimeTimezoneUtcOffsetMinutes": -240,
"visit": {
"hierarchyLevel": 1,
"probability": 0.8500000238418579,
"topCandidate": {
"placeId": "ChIJKdSfy-oe24gR348UC3HZCco",
"semanticType": "UNKNOWN",
"probability": 0.9865431189537048,
"placeLocation": {
"latLng": "26.2546431°, -81.7999503°"
I wanted to convert it to an Excel file, so I searched online for a Json to csv converter. They are out there but the free versions only convert small files and not very well at that.
So, with a bit of help from Claude and CoPilot I wrote custom python code to do the conversion. I have an engineering degree, but I am not by any means a software programmer. I do have some training in writing software though, so I know the basics.
If you go to my GitHub repository at https://github.com/richie11111/Convert-Android-Timeline-to-csv You can download the code. There is a readme file to walk you through running it.
After the conversion and some Excel reformatting the points are organized into rows in Excel that looks like this.
Time Time Offset Latitude Longitude Segment Type Start Time Start Time Offset End Time
11/17/2019 3:27:00 -05:00 42.137038 -88.103457 Timeline Path 11/17/2019 3:00:00 -05:00 11/17/2019 5:00:00
11/17/2019 12:13:00 -05:00 42.125784 -88.128109 Timeline Path 11/17/2019 11:00:00 -05:00 11/17/2019 13:00:00
11/17/2019 12:16:00 -05:00 42.127712 -88.128986 Timeline Path 11/17/2019 11:00:00 -05:00 11/17/2019 13:00:00
11/17/2019 12:27:00 -05:00 42.137190 -88.103449 Timeline Path 11/17/2019 11:00:00 -05:00 11/17/2019 13:00:00
This makes it much easier to search particular times and dates. You can also convert this to Google Earth and plot it on a map for your forensic analysis.
Σχόλια