Guide
Your travel history from Google Maps, day by day
A citizenship application wants every absence over five years. A naturalization form wants every trip. A residency count wants the number of days you spent in a country. Most people answer from memory, passport stamps and old emails, and get a few dates wrong. If Google Maps Timeline was on while you travelled, your phone already wrote those dates down: the day each trip left one country and the day it arrived in another.
What the forms actually count
Canadian citizenship: 1,095 days in five years
You need at least 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada in the five years immediately before you apply, and the application asks for every absence. The IRCC physical presence calculator counts the day you leave and the day you return as days in Canada, because you were in Canada for part of each: an absence from 1 to 15 July is 13 days. IRCC also advises applying with more than the minimum, in case an absence was miscounted.
US naturalization (Form N-400): every trip outside the United States
Part 8 of the N-400 asks you to list all the trips you have taken outside the United States during the last five years, or the last three if you file as the spouse of a US citizen (instructions, edition 01/20/25). The general rule also asks for 30 months, 913 days, of physical presence in those five years.
US tax residency: the substantial presence test
You are a US resident for tax purposes if you were present at least 31 days this year and 183 days over three years, counting all of this year's days, a third of last year's and a sixth of the year before (IRS). Any part of a day in the United States counts as a day. This is the count Canadian snowbirds keep an eye on every winter.
UK settlement and other 183-day rules
Settlement routes in the UK limit time abroad during the qualifying period, and many countries treat 183 days of presence in a year as tax residence. The thresholds differ by route and by country, and some changed recently; check GOV.UK or your own tax authority for the rule that applies to you. What they all need from you is the same thing: the dates.
Get the history out of your phone
Since 2024 Timeline lives on the phone, not in your Google Account, so the export comes from the phone:
Android
- Open Settings on your phone.
- Go to Location → Location services → Timeline.
- Tap Export Timeline data. This produces a
Timeline.jsonfile.
iPhone
- Open the Google Maps app.
- Tap your profile picture → Settings → Location & Privacy.
- Find the Timeline export option and choose Save to Files.
If you kept a Google Takeout archive from before the move to the phone, drop it in as well: the two are merged and cover more years together.
From trips to days per country
Open the export in Time-mile and choose Days per country under the trips table. Everything is read in your browser; the file is not uploaded anywhere. You get, for each calendar year, the number of days spent in each country, and the list of stays: country, first day, last day, number of days. That list is the shape an absence table on a form takes.
How a day is counted, so you can check it against your form:
- A day counts in a country when a trip started or ended there that day. A day on which you crossed a border counts in both countries, the way the IRCC calculator and the substantial presence test count departure and return days.
- Between two trips in the same country, up to 14 quiet days are filled with that country: you did not move, so you were still there.
- Every other day stays unknown, and is shown as unknown. A gap of three weeks with no data, or a gap that starts in one country and ends in another, is not guessed.
Where it stops: your Timeline only holds what your phone recorded and kept. A phone that took over Timeline in 2024 may hold only a year or two, and new Timelines auto-delete after three months unless you change the setting. Five years of absences usually needs an old Takeout archive as well, or other records for the years before.
Use it to find the dates, then check them
A Timeline export is a record your phone made at the time, which beats memory. It is not an official travel record, and authorities can compare what you declare with border records. Use the stays list to find every trip, then check each date against your passport, boarding passes, or an official travel history before you copy it into a form, and declare every absence it shows, short ones included.
See your days per country
Drop your Timeline export and open Days per country. The counts are free; the full CSV of stays and days comes with a paid plan covering those years.
Launch Time-mileFrequently asked questions
Can Google Maps show my travel history?
Yes, if Timeline was on while you travelled. It records every trip your phone saw, with the place and time it started and ended, so the days you left a country and came back are in it. Google Maps shows it one day at a time; to list every trip abroad at once, export the Timeline and open the file in a tool that counts days per country.
How far back does my Google Maps travel history go?
As far back as your phone has kept it. Since Timeline moved onto the device in 2024, history starts when your phone took it over, and the default auto-delete for new Timelines is three months. An older Google Takeout archive, if you kept one, can cover the years before. Neither can be rebuilt once deleted.
Does the day I left and the day I came back count as a day in the country?
For Canadian citizenship, yes: the IRCC physical presence calculator counts both as days in Canada, so an absence from 1 to 15 July is 13 days. For the US substantial presence test, any part of a day spent in the United States counts as a day there. Time-mile counts a crossing day in both countries for that reason.
Is a Google Timeline export proof of where I was?
It is a record made at the time by your phone, which is better than memory, but it is not an official travel record. Immigration authorities can compare your declared trips with border records, so use it to find the dates, check them against your passport stamps, boarding passes or an official travel history, and declare every absence.
What happens to the days my phone recorded nothing?
Time-mile fills a quiet stretch of up to 14 days only when you were seen in the same country on both sides of it. Every other day without data stays unknown and is shown as such: a day with no record is not a day at home.
Sources
Checked 15 October 2026: IRCC physical presence calculator and its FAQ; USCIS Form N-400 and instructions, edition 01/20/25; IRS, substantial presence test; GOV.UK, long residence eligibility.