How to get back your Google Maps timeline if you were affected by the wipe-out bug

Earlier this month, Google made one extra blunder on top of an already-annoying situation with Maps timeline. After hindering timelines (for privacy reasons, I should add) by tying them to one phone and un-linking them from our Google accounts, Maps suffered a bug that effectively deleted the entire timeline history for many people.

I was affected. Years and years of countries, cities, and places just gone from my phone, with seemingly no way to get them back. I had signed up to keep it all backed up, but I didn’t want to risk applying it while the bug was active and potentially lose all my data altogether. This contains everywhere I’ve been and everything I’ve done in the last decade or so, and I often refer to it to remember that one restaurant I went to on vacation or where that €70 charge on my credit card last week came from. So I waited. On Friday, Google sent me and other affected users an email admitting the bug and telling us it’s safe to restore now.

So I did that, and it worked! The major caveat is that I had already enabled timeline backups in Google Maps. If you didn’t, I’m sorry to say that there’s very little you can do to get your timeline back. Maybe reverting to an older version of Maps, pre-timeline fiasco, would work, but I haven’t tested that. To restore your backed-up data, here are the steps to follow:

1. Make sure you update Google Maps to the latest version. I’m running version 25.12.01.737373685.
2. Open Google Maps, tap on your profile picture on the top right, and go to Your Timeline.
3. Tap the cloud and arrow icon on the top right (as shown in the screenshots below).
4. On the backup page that shows up, look for your account and phone, and tap the overflow ⋮ button next to it on the right.
   • Note: Backup should have been turned on already, as I mentioned earlier. If it isn’t, you can’t restore your existing timeline. The only thing you can do is enable backups now on your Google account so that you never lose your timeline moving forward.
5. Choose Import and confirm it once again by tapping Import.

The pop-up explains that your device will override the import if they both have data from the same day. I can also confirm that my old timeline data was merged with my new on-device data since the bug occurred, so I didn’t lose anything because of the bug. You can clearly see in the screenshot below on the left that I’d completely lost all of my visits, and then the two screenshots next to it show that I gained back all my existing data.

This bug does leave a sour taste in my mouth, though, regarding Google’s ability to handle Maps’ new timeline situation. I’d love to just trust that my data will be safe from bugs and erroneous deletes, but it’s tough to say for sure. Worse yet, those who didn’t know they could back up their data probably lost their entire timeline for good. No bueno, Google, no bueno.