I like the fact that my Android phone records my location timeline from Google Maps, but the fact that this is stored in Google servers creeps me out.
I know you can download the entire location history database from Google so I was planning on building a custom app to store and browse this data.
I was also curious if there would be the possibility of making the phone send locations to this app instead of Google, but I don’t know much about Android and I don’t know if this would be possible.
What do you think about it? Is there already an app like this? Do you think this is a good idea?
Been there, the issue I encountered is that most other apps would rely on active GPS and drain battery with it. Also, not many apps can access the GPS without a prompt, at least on xiaomi I had that… Maybe it’s something to do with their OS customization… Anyway, Ideally you’d like to access in intervals and only wake GPS if other means (e.g. WLAN passive scan of surrounding SSIDs, like google services does) lack certain accuracy.
On your Xiaomi first time you launched app, you can determine wether you always allow or allow on prompt (but you should still be able to manage that setting afterwards). You also need to disable battery optimization for that app and set app to be able to auto launch in background. This is at least what I do with my home assistant app to determine GPS location in background (app record every 15mn) and no issues with battery draining.