How to clear Google Maps search history

Google Maps is such an essential part of our phones that it’s hard to imagine a smartphone without it. This ubiquitous tool is free and can navigate you out of any situation if there’s enough cellular and GPS signal. In some cases, it doesn’t even need that much.

That said, Google Maps, like most apps and services available today, tracks and captures a lot of data on your movements, your search history, and even the services you’ve used. Whether you have a problem with a company tracking and logging your every more or simply don’t want a nosy third-party snooping on your movements, there are times when you’ll want to clear your Google Maps search history. Here’s how you do that.

Delete Google Maps search history on smartphone

1. Open the Google Maps app

2. Tap on your profile picture on the top-right of the screen

3. Scroll down to ‘Your data in Maps’ and tap on it

4. Scroll to ‘Location History’

5. Tap on ‘See and delete activity’

6. Tap the x button on every item of location data that you want to delete.

You can also disable ‘Location History’ by tapping on the icon and selecting ‘Turn Off’ in the  page that opens.

You can delete search and app activity history in a similar manner by tapping on ‘See and delete activity’ under the ‘Web & App Activity’ section.

Google also gives you the option of deleting just a range of items or even by date. One of the most useful options is the ‘Delete today’ button that deletes all activities for the day. This is a great option for those who want to take advantage of Google Maps’ advanced features while keeping certain aspects of your life private.

When you select the delete option, Google will start deleting and decoupling the data from your account. While the deleted data immediately disappears from your app, it may take a little while for it to be safely and completely deleted from Google’s servers. This will happen in the background, however, and is not something you need to focus on unless there’s some critical data that needs to be gone.

Do note that despite putting in a delete request, Google might not remove all data. Here’s what they have to say about it, “For limited purposes, like business or legal requirements, Google may retain certain types of data for an extended period of time.”

As you can see deleting data from Google Maps to secure it from prying eyes is easily done. Google also gives you granular control of how and what data is deleted, making it easy for you to delete certain items of tracked data while leaving everything else intact so Google can continue to tailor experiences for you. A complete wipe is, however, not possible, per Google.