Last updated: October 17, 2026
Timeline Recovery rebuilds a personal location archive from the GPS metadata already stored in your photo library. It is designed to work without uploading or copying your photos. This policy explains how your information is handled in the app.
When you grant photo library access, Timeline Recovery reads each photo’s capture date, the GPS coordinates embedded in its metadata, and its local photo identifier (used to avoid importing a photo twice and to find a visit’s original photos).
Scanning does not analyze image contents or infer locations from pixels. When you choose View Photos for a visit, the app asks Apple’s Photos framework for previews of that visit’s original photos, for display only. It never edits your photo library.
The recovered archive is stored only on your device: visits built from nearby GPS-tagged photos; country, city and date information; place names returned by reverse geocoding; identifiers of photos already processed; and the last scan time and scan timing shown in the app.
You can delete this archive in Settings. Deleting it also clears the last scan time and timing information. It never deletes photos.
Timeline Recovery does not upload, sell or save copies of your photos. The photo viewer holds previews in memory only while they are on screen.
If an original photo is stored only in iCloud, you can choose Load from iCloud, which lets Apple’s Photos framework download it from your own iCloud library. The photo is never sent to the developer or to any analysis service. Deleted photos, and photos outside the access you granted, may be unavailable.
Timeline Recovery does not ask for your current location and does not track you. It uses only the coordinates found in your photos’ metadata.
To show country and city names, visit coordinates may be processed by Apple’s geocoding service; the returned place names are saved on your device.
When you choose to open a visit in a maps app (such as Apple Maps or Google Maps), that visit’s coordinates are handed to the app you pick so it can show the place. This happens only when you tap it, and from then on that app’s own privacy policy applies.
Timeline Recovery uses Apple’s StoreKit for the Lifetime Unlock purchase. Payment is handled entirely by Apple.
If you export your archive, Timeline Recovery creates files such as CSV, JSON, GeoJSON, GPX or KML on your device so you can save or share them. Where those files go after that is up to you.
Sending feedback is optional and happens only when you write a message in Settings → Feedback → Send Feedback or Request a Feature and tap Send. The message is sent together with the app version, iOS version, device model, preferred language and whether Lifetime Unlock is active. No photos, photo locations, archive data, account or advertising identifiers are sent.
Feedback is processed on the developer’s server: messages are automatically screened for abuse and spam (using Google’s Gemini API), forwarded to the developer’s private notification channel, and kept for up to 90 days. Your IP address is used only for rate limiting and is not stored with the message.
The app contains no advertising networks, no analytics SDKs and no tracking.
Timeline Recovery is an independent app and is not affiliated with Google or any other timeline service. It cannot recover data deleted from external servers; it reads only the metadata already present in your photos.
For support or privacy questions, open Settings → Feedback → Send Feedback or Request a Feature in the app. See the Feedback section above for what is sent with your message.