dawarich

Your favorite self-hostable alternative to Google Timeline (Google Location History)

⭐ 8,930 stars on GitHub · 🍴 295 forks · 📜 License: agpl-3.0 · 💻 Language: Ruby

What is dawarich?

If you want Google Timeline without handing your movement history to Google, Dawarich is one of the strongest self-hosted options available. Its differentiator is scope: it is not just a GPS point viewer, but a full location-history app with maps, trips, family sharing, imports, exports, and photo integrations.

Main components

• Live location tracking via Dawarich mobile apps, OwnTracks, GPSLogger, Overland, PhoneTrack, and Home Assistant.
• Interactive map view with points, route lines, heatmap, customizable layers, and “Fog of War” exploration.
• Import tools for Google Maps Timeline, OwnTracks, Strava, GPX, GeoJSON, Immich, and photo EXIF data.
• Trip creation for visualizing routes, distance, time spent, notes, and related geotagged photos.
• Statistics and insights covering visited countries, cities, distance traveled, time periods, and frequent places.
• Family sharing with per-user consent controls for viewing live or recent locations.
• Integrations with Immich and Photoprism to place your photo library on the map.
• Export support to GeoJSON and GPX so your data is not trapped in the app.

Clear use cases

• Replace Google Timeline with a private, self-hosted archive of your location history.
• Import years of Google Takeout location data and keep browsing it on your own server.
• Track family member locations with explicit opt-in sharing instead of relying on a commercial location-sharing app.
• Build travel journals from GPS tracks, trips, notes, and geotagged photos.
• Analyze days spent in each country for travel planning, tax-residency awareness, or long-term personal stats.
• Connect OwnTracks, GPSLogger, or Home Assistant to centralize location data in a homelab-friendly dashboard.

The biggest strength is data ownership without losing the Google Timeline experience — Dawarich gives you the familiar map-based memory layer, but keeps the raw movement data under your control. Commercial timeline and family-location products are smoother and more stable, but they usually monetize or centralize one of the most sensitive datasets you generate: where you go, when, and with whom.

The trade-off is that Dawarich is under active development, and the maintainers explicitly warn against automatic updates. You should read release notes, back up before upgrades, and expect occasional breaking changes. That makes it better suited to users comfortable running Docker services than to someone who wants a zero-maintenance consumer app.

Best for privacy-focused homelab users, frequent travelers, quantified-self fans, and families who want Google Timeline-style tracking on infrastructure they control.

Topics: the project is tagged with popular topics:

• 🏷️ google-maps
• 🏷️ gpslogger
• 🏷️ hacktoberfest
• 🏷️ homelab
• 🏷️ maps
• 🏷️ memory
• 🏷️ owntracks
• 🏷️ self-hosted
• 🏷️ timeline

📸 Screenshots

Quick install

See the README for detailed install instructions. Most projects support Docker — if the repo has a Dockerfile, use:

git clone https://github.com/Freika/dawarich.git
cd dawarich
docker build -t dawarich .
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 dawarich

Minimum system requirements

⚡ Deploy fast on VSIS

Use the VSIS VPS Mini 1GB RAM / 1 vCPU / 15GB SSD (~70k/tháng) plan from VSIS.NET — high-speed VN-based VPS, 24/7 support, ideal for running dawarich smoothly.

🎯 Benefits:

• One-command docker compose up -d deploy in 2 minutes
• Dedicated IPv4, root access, unmetered domestic bandwidth
• Daily snapshot backup
• Free install assistance from the VSIS team

👉 See matching VPS plans at vsis.net

Resources

• 🔗 GitHub: Freika/dawarich
• 🌐 Homepage: https://dawarich.app?utm_source=github&utm_medium=project_description
• 📚 Official docs: see README in the repo
• 💬 Community: GitHub Issues + Discussions

Article compiled from GitHub data on 05/05/2026. Star/fork counts may have changed — see live numbers via the GitHub link.