Creating an Android phone location history heat map

[Bob Eisenman]

I created a cummulative Google Maps location history heat map of my Android phone's archived Google GPS timeline data. I've had the location history feature turned on for a few years.

For example.....a trip to Washington DC awhile ago produced this heat map.

Note that the more you zoom into the map the more precisely the heat map locations are presented.

Several trips by bus to New York City (before Covid-19) produced this heat map

A few rides and train rides to the Plum Island area of Massachusetts produced this heat map

 

To make the heat map I followed the instructions found at

https://towardsdatascience.com/create-a-heat-map-from-your-google-location-history-in-3-easy-steps-e66c93925914

Google sent back 2 email messages about the 'takeout' request. The second received message, which occured several minutes after the request, was the download link for the 'takeout zip file'.

The complete zip file (cummulative location history json plus month by month json files) was about 36 MB. The needed location history 'json' file, found in the zip archive, was almost a half gigabyte when extracted from the zip file archive.

The 'Location History.json' file was uploaded to a free Location History visualizer designated in the instructions.

https://locationhistoryvisualizer.com/heatmap/

I did everything on my Android phone.