this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
299 points (99.0% liked)

Selfhosted

46672 readers
270 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
299
Google killed Maps Timeline, so I self-hosted a better one [OwnTracks] (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] gullmar@feddit.it 18 points 1 day ago

I tried both the OwnTracks server and Dawarich, and had problems using them with my reverse proxy (Caddy), which I didn't manage to fix. Eventually, I installed the Nextcloud app Phonetrack, and I've been using it for months with the OwnTracks client: it works fine, it can also export GPX files, which I can use to tag pictures shot with my camera, using Darktable. I recommend this solution if you are already using Nextcloud!

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 38 points 1 day ago

There is also

https://dawarich.app/

But I could never get it to ingest any data from the recc Android apps (this is probably a me problem, though, Linux Unplugged crew are using it).

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Misleading as fuck. The Timeline feature never went away - it's just device-only.

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

Google also accidentally deleted a random amount of user's timeline data if you didn't immediately catch it and restore from back up last March before the affected backups were overwritten. If you didn't keep a close enough watch on your timeline to know that that happened, everything before ~Feb 2025 is gone now.

Ask me how I know. Yes I kept up on permissions. Yes I had backups on. No I didn't have a new device. I even have dozens of available gigabytes of paid storage on Google One.

I'm sure it will only get more stable due to maps and timeline being revenue generators that encourage investment.

[–] Lemming6969@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

It requires drill down now and doesn't list visits on the location itself which is a huge negative.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There's a good chunk of us who used it with the web, and they're adding that to the vast Google graveyard. That in and of itself makes me excited to see an alternative because Google will kill the app version on a whim too.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The device only was for privacy. When the data was stored in the cloud, the government had unrestricted access. By making it device only they need to get your device to get that data.

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Privacy? I'm sure that Google tried so hard to monetize it and after so many years they didn't found a way, couldn't use it for ai training too, so they decided to turn it off and save millions in database costs.

They still exfiltrate user movements for improving Google maps, it's just that they don't need to keep them indefinitely or for years or maintain a nice interface for that

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago

I'm sure Google does monetize the gps data instantly, then throws it away rather than save old data that only costs money to respond to government requests.

This is a case where privacy is economically beneficial to Google.

[–] 3abas@lemm.ee 6 points 22 hours ago

Yes, that's correct, Google didn't do it out of the goodness of their non-existent heart, they made what they think is the best financial decision.

It's a good one for the consumer though, whether see that or not. It's good that your every move ever taken is stored in a company's database.

Don't worry, they most certainly used it to train a decent model of any typical American demographics movements before scrubbing it.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Lol. The only thing this setting does is hide the information from the user. Google, or a thousand other data brokers (many probably created by Google for this purpose) still retain that data indefinitely.

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

It never went away. It's still a feature. It's just stored locally on your device. Thats it.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, technically it's still on the tiny screen of your phone with a really bad ux to make it go, sure. But you see how 'went away' is both true for web and effectively true for phone app? You do see that, right?

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, super hard to find...

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

What does device-only mean in this context? That it's only stored on your phone?

[–] dan@upvote.au 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Because of various privacy legislation, and people not wanting Google to track them as much, they stopped syncing the data to Google servers. As someone who's worked at big tech companies, my guess would be that storing so many people's location history was flagged as an issue during a privacy audit.

It's entirely local now. You can enable encrypted backups and back up the data, however you can really only have the data on one device now, and the web version is gone.

[–] gazter@aussie.zone 11 points 1 day ago

It's no longer accessible from a desktop, only from the Google Maps app.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 day ago

What else could that possibly mean?

[–] Paige@piefed.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks for clarifying, I was worried for a second.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How exactly does it work from your phone's perspective? Does it hook into Google Play Services location data? Do you need to install a different low-level application that replicates that functionality? (If so, what's the battery life impact like?) Does it need a foregrounded app?

I'm really interested in this, because like the author I'm really upset at Google killing yet another incredibly useful feature. But the article is a little light on details.

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It (theoretically) works without PlayServices. I'm on CalyxOS with MicroG enabled and while I was testing OwnTracks I think MicroG was using the Gplay Location services or something? I've since turned something off in MicroG location settings that was phoning home to Google and GPS is pretty bad now, not sure if OwnTracks would still be usable.

I think the official app tries to not be killed by Android woth the usual tricks (permanent notification, disabling battery optimisation):

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.owntracks.android

You can (theoretically) control how often locations are tracked and sent but for me was using the location service constantly and draining battery quite a bit.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

the official app tries to not be killed by Android woth the usual tricks (permanent notification, disabling battery optimisation)

…

You can (theoretically) control how often locations are tracked and sent but for me was using the location service constantly and draining battery quite a bit.

Ah. Those are exactly what I was worried about. It's not able to just happen entirely in the background the same way Google's feature does, then? Kind of automagically?

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 12 hours ago

Mmmh, I don't think the app ever got disabled by Android during my days of testing (I actually reinstalled yesterday and having a look again, battery drain seems a bit better now so far ... ). But obviously a system service is always gonna be prioritised higher than a user app. But as I said I didn't have this problem with this app (actually the only one I can think of is Syncthing and with that I'm not sure if it's not the app going to a sleep mode or something by itself).

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The article said there's a phone companion app

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 1 day ago

But not exactly how the app works. If it's a Strava-like app you have to remember to run in the foreground, the value is a lot lower to me than something that either uses or replicates GPS' automatic background behaviour.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried setting up own tracks like a year ago and it sucked HARD.

Has the computer setup potion become any easier?

[–] jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What problems did you encounter? I dimly not using the official docker-compose file but one from else (because I wanted to use Http?) but personally I didn't find it as complicated as setting up Immich or Invoice Ninja or other services that have multiple containers that need to talk to each other.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

Hmm. I’ll have to try it again.

If I run into issues I’ll report back and thanks!