Sometimes I want to see where I was at a given point in time. There's many sources of personal location history, some obvious, some less so.

Google Timeline is particularly nice. It provides a UI to pick a calendar date and view GPS tracks on a map. But, it only shows points recorded by Google Maps. There are many more sources of location data which we can leverage. It would be nice to see those on the map too; and of course, not using Google services is always a plus.

I want a time series of GPS coordinates. Each [timestamp, coordinate] pair should indicate where I was at that time. At time of writing I can only be one place at a time, which drastically simplifies the problem.

Once I have that database we can leverage it for ✨ actionable insights ✨.

To get this database, I need a thing that can ingest time series location data from any source. I mentioned these thoughts to a friend in mid 2025 and predictably he told me that several options already exist (like most good ideas I have). These include:

1. Traccar - Primarily geared towards supporting hardware GPS devices, but has a robust storage framework and map view. Has a native iOS app. Points are stored in TimescaleDB which is exactly what I want
2. dawarich - I am using this now. It works but performance and stability seems poor. It has a native iOS app which is a killer feature.
3. owntracks

See also: autoarchaeology

1. Strava
2. Garmin
3. Comma
4. Google Timeline
5. Photo geolocation tags