Activate Location Services for Google Maps
Before Google Maps can track your location, you must turn on Location Services on the iPhone. The Google Maps app doesn’t have to be launched on the iPhone to track your location, but it can’t work without location services being turned on and then activated for Google Maps.
View Tracking History in Google Maps
After turning on Location Services, here’s how to view your tracking history in the Google Maps app:
Apple iOS & iPhone Location History How-To
Apple also collects location data if you allow it to, but it provides less historical data and less detail. However, you can see some history. Here’s how you set it up on your iPhone: You may delete history from the timeline or delete your entire history from the database. Apple stores a limited number of locations and doesn’t provide precise travel tracks and timelines like Google. It provides a place, a date, and an approximate position circle on a non-interactive (you can’t pinch-to-zoom it) map. If you don’t want Apple to track you, toggle off Significant Locations in your iPhone’s Settings app.
How Location Services Work
Not many people know that the location awareness of their portable devices and software extends to tracking and recording their location history, as well. In the case of Google, if you opt-in, your location history consists of a detailed and searchable data file with a visible trail, organized by date and time. Apple provides less information but keeps, and displays at your request, a record of your recently visited places, without the detailed trail feature that Google offers. Both Google and Apple provide these history files with assurances about privacy, and you can opt-out or, in the case of Google, erase your location history. These are valuable services that help you as long as you have opted into them. In some situations, location history could play an important role in legal or rescue situations.
