Is it possible to see location history for my devices? Or is location history only specific to a google account?

Question

Is it possible to see location history for my devices? Or is location history only specific to a google account?

So for example..

If I go to https://myaccount.google.com/find-your-phone

The most info I get is that a device was located in the united kingdom..

The one last seen Oct 21st is lost. I don't know if location history is turned on on that one.

A phone that I have to hand, is the first one listed there, seen 12min ago. I have the "find my device" app installed on it(which may help I dont know). And I have turned on "use location", and I have turned "location history" on, by choosing location history then choosing the google account, the one that lists the device.

I can go to my google account (which knows of all my devices), and I can go to "manage your google account", and £data and privacy", "location history", and I see location history set to on there. And "manage history".

But I think that's just showing me placed i've been to with google maps.. or maybe it's using GPS too so even without google maps..

But it's not showing me where the particular phone has been. It just means that some device I had with me has moved to those locations.

But it's not working on a per device basis.

Is there any location history option that works on a per device basis?

Answer 1

The 'manage history' option you found is showing you something google calls your 'timeline'. It is using your location history to guess at where you've been, and in my experience it's pretty accurate, but it doesn't require you to actually use google maps to get there, it's mostly passive.

I feel like you may have already tried this, but you might have luck just finding out where you were on the last day that phone was seen.

I did a quick check... and you can use google takeout to export your location history in its entirety. This website will give you a good start: https://www.maketecheasier.com/visualize-google-location-history/

This may require... a lot of work, especially if you aren't familiar with JSON files, but the exported documents do have locations recorded with a 'devicetag' that seems to correspond to the device that was at that location along with a latitude/longtitude and other details.