How to stop Google Maps from eating your phone's storage
A shift toward on-device location history and accumulated cache is turning the navigation app into a storage hog.
Google Maps is increasingly consuming significant portions of smartphone storage, sometimes reaching several gigabytes. This growth is driven by a combination of offline map downloads, accumulated application cache, and a fundamental shift in how Google handles user location data.
Storage bloat stems from three primary sources: downloaded offline maps, on-device Timeline location history, and cached data such as searches and map tiles. The app constantly stores navigation routes and page content; over time, this background cache often fails to clear itself properly, causing the app's footprint to balloon.
The Shift to On-Device Storage
A critical driver of this increased storage usage is Google's transition of Timeline location history. While this data was previously stored in the cloud, Google announced in December 2023 that it would move this history to on-device storage. This rollout occurred throughout 2024 and 2025, with a specific deadline of December 1, 2024, for many users. Consequently, years of travel and location data that once resided on Google's servers now occupy physical space on the user's device.
Why It Matters
For users with limited device capacity—particularly those with 64GB or 128GB phones—this app bloat can become a critical issue. Because the transition to on-device Timeline storage happened as a privacy-focused update, many users are unaware that their location history is now stored locally. Without manual intervention, the app can grow to a size that negatively impacts overall device performance and reduces the available space for other essential apps, photos, and media.
How to Reclaim Space
Users can recover their storage by targeting the three main sources of bloat. The most immediate gains are typically found by deleting unnecessary offline maps that were downloaded for previous trips. Additionally, users can manage their Timeline backups to control how much location data is kept locally. Finally, accessing the device's app settings to manually clear the Google Maps application cache can remove the accumulated tiles and search data that the app failed to purge automatically.
What's Next
As more users complete the migration to on-device Timeline storage, the trend of "silent" storage consumption is expected to persist. Users should periodically monitor their storage settings to ensure the app does not exceed manageable limits. While Google has provided tools for cloud backups of this local data, the physical footprint on the device remains a primary concern for those with limited hardware capacity.