It is no secret that Google’s data collection skills rival the National Security Agency (NSA) for thoroughness, and the newly launched “Your Timeline” feature for Google Maps shows just how much the search giant knows about you. Pulling from Google’s “Location History” data, you can now view a timeline of all of the places you have been, including the routes you used and even the individual addresses you visited.

Google Maps Product Manager Gerard Sanz called the new timeline feature “a useful way to remember and view the places you’ve been on a given day, month or year.”

“Your Timeline allows you to visualize your real-world routines, easily see the trips you’ve taken and get a glimpse of the places where you spend your time,” Sanz wrote on the Google Maps blog. “And if you use Google Photos, we’ll show the photos you took when viewing a specific day, to help resurface your memories.”

Of course, there are obvious privacy concerns with this sort of tool, but Sanz reassured users that their information is safe.

“Your Timeline is private and visible only to you; and you control the locations you choose to keep,” Sanz wrote. “This means you can easily delete a day or your full history at any time. You can edit any place that appears in Your Timeline, including removing a specific location or giving a frequented spot a private name like — Mom’s House or My Favorite Running Spot.”

How it works

For the feature to work, you will first have had to enable Location History in your Google settings, which allows Google to track your location through a combination of GPS and cell data. Location History also improves the functionality of Google Now by providing you with contextually relevant cards, such as public transit information when you are at a bus stop. If your history has not been enabled in the past, there will be no locations to view in the timeline.

On desktop you can visit www.google.com/maps/timeline to access your timeline, or you can access the feature by tapping “Your timeline” from the Google Maps Android app.

The timeline allows you to view all of the locations you have visited at once, or you can view locations by date. You can also view single or multi-day trips you have taken, and Google Maps will label them by location and length such as “Weekend in Dallas” or “Saturday morning in Chicago.”

Sanz notes that Google is still in the processing of rolling the feature out now, so it might not be available for everyone yet.

Screenshot via Google Maps