Timeline Visualizer Original

Timeline Visualizer Original is the Android app from MahlerLab, creator of the open-source Timeline Visualizer project. Turn your Google Maps Timeline into animated travel videos and keep a private Travel Journal on your phone.

Import your Timeline export, choose a trip or date range, preview your route, and create an MP4 to watch or share.

Build your Travel Journal

• Import Timeline.json to build a Journal that stays on this device

• Return with newer exports to preserve detail a later export would lose

• Videos use your most detailed routes, filling gaps with Timeline history

• Optional quiet reminders when a fresh export is worth importing

Create your story

• Find trips automatically, or enter dates by hand

• Make monthly, yearly, or custom-range recaps

• Draw a finer route from recent raw location samples, when present

• Personalize a reusable title such as “2026 Mina's Timeline”

• Preview the animation before creating the full-quality video

• Choose a map view: Fixed scale, Wide, Balanced, or Close-up

• Balance long journeys with long-trip pacing and local trip framing

• Export 480p to 2160p in square, portrait, or landscape, with custom resolution and frame rate

• Choose 10 to 300 seconds, and save your own presets with a default

• Conservatively ignore isolated GPS outliers, or turn filtering off

• Finish with a smooth zoom-out and complete-route overview

• Keep creating in the background, with notifications

• Save videos automatically to Movies/Timeline Visualizer on Android 10 and later

• Save or share the final 1080 × 1080 route overview

Need to restore older trips first?

Open the localized restoration guide from the app. It explains how to import an existing encrypted Timeline backup in Google Maps, then export a new JSON file for Timeline Visualizer. The app never accesses your Google account or encrypted backup.

Your Library

Saved trips, recaps, and every video you create appear in Library with a thumbnail, title, date, duration, and period. Add older MP4 files, play them in the app, share, or delete the library with confirmation.

Simple navigation

Move between Library, Create, and Settings from the bottom navigation bar. Map view, pacing, and video quality become your defaults for the next video.

Designed for privacy

Your Timeline file and Travel Journal are never uploaded, and the Journal is excluded from Android backup and device transfer. Routes, titles, and generated videos are processed on your device. No Google sign-in, analytics, advertising, or location permission is used.

To draw the map, the app requests map tiles from CARTO. Those requests include map-area tile coordinates and normal network information, which may reveal places in your Timeline to CARTO. The app explains this before the first Timeline is loaded and lets you cancel.

Timeline Visualizer is an independent open-source app. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. Google Maps is a trademark of Google LLC.