Google Maps Export

This repository contain 4 Python 3 scripts that can be used to export saved locations from Google Maps to other formats which then can be imported by GPS navigation apps or other POI convertion tools. The three scrips are:

• csv2kml: Export Favorites / Flagged Places / Want To Go / and custom lists to KML.

• json2kml: this script converts the list of starred/saved places (a.k.a. POIs) from Google Maps into a KML file that can be imported into various GPS navigation applications (suchs as MAPS.ME).

• json2csv: this script converts the list of starred/saved places (a.k.a. POIs) from Google Maps into a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file that can be imported into some POI convertion tools or edited directly in Excel.

• json2sygic: this script converts the list of starred/saved places (a.k.a. POIs) from Google Maps into the internal format used by Sygic Android to save its favorites ("items.dat") file.

Step 1: Google Takeout for JSON/CSV files

1. Go to Google Takeout (https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout).
2. Click “Select None”
3. Select “Maps (your places)”.
4. Select "Saved" - "collections of saved links (images, places, web pages, etc.) from Google Search and Maps"
5. Google will export a ZIP file. Save this file to your local disk, open it and extract.

Takeout contains several relevant files:

• Maps (your places)/Saved Places.json
• Saved/Favourite places.csv
• Saved/Flag.csv
• Saved/Want to go.csv

csv2kml

First you need a Google API key

1. If needed, greated a Google Cloud Project
2. Enable Places API
3. Goto https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials
4. Click: Create credentials
5. Copy API key
6. Run this and paste to save key

install -D /dev/stdin -m 600 ~/.private/google-api

This script depends on mako so:

pip3 install mako

Run it like this:

./csv2kml.py sample/takeout.csv > output.kml 

Checked failed.csv for entries we were not able to convert.

Dev Notes

• these files use FTID identifiers
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47017387/decoding-the-google-maps-embedded-parameters
• the undocumented API call is:
  • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?key=KEY&ftid=0xd62377123a70817:0x85e89b65fcf7c648
• I was not able to find out what param1 is, but when a place (e. g., a store) is selected, param2 is the Google Maps customer id (CID) in hexadecimal encoding.
• related: https://gpx2googlemaps.com/#/

json2kml

This script depends on [“SIMPLEKML” library] (https://simplekml.readthedocs.io/) and it can be installed via pip with the following command line (on Windows you may need to run this command in Command Prompt Admin):

pip install simplekml

After this, the following steps must be executed to generate the KML file from the Google Maps starred/saved locations:

1. First go to Google Takeout and save the "Saved Places.json" file to a folder on your local disk. More details in the above section ["How to export Google Maps saved/starred locations"] (#how-to-export-google-maps-savedstarred-locations-to-a-json-file).
2. Download and save the Python script [json2kml.py] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmrsouza/json2kml/master/json2kml.py) to the same folder where the file "Saved Places.json" is located.
3. Open a command prompt, change the current directory to where the above files were saved, and run the script with the command line python json2kml.py
4. The script will run and will create the file “Saved Places.kml”.

json2csv

1. First go to Google Takeout and save the "Saved Places.json" file to a folder on your local disk. More details in the above section ["How to export Google Maps saved/starred locations"] (#how-to-export-google-maps-savedstarred-locations-to-a-json-file).
2. Download and save the Python script [json2csv.py] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmrsouza/json2kml/master/json2csv.py) to the same folder where the file "Saved Places.json" is located.
3. Open a command prompt, change the current directory to where the above files were saved, and run the script with the command line: python json2csv.py
4. The script will run and will create the file “Saved Places.csv”.
5. Use this file with other convertion tools or open it in Excel.

json2sygic

1. First go to Google Takeout and save the "Saved Places.json" file to a folder on your local disk. More details in the above section ["How to export Google Maps saved/starred locations"] (#how-to-export-google-maps-savedstarred-locations-to-a-json-file).
2. Download and save the Python script [json2sygic.py] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmrsouza/json2kml/master/json2sygic.py) to the same folder where the file "Saved Places.json" is located.
3. Open a command prompt, change the current directory to where the above files were saved, and run the script with the command line python json2sygic.py
4. The script will run and will create the file “items.dat”.
5. Copy the file “items.dat” to your Android device. See notes below for more details about the folder to where this file must be copied. IMPORTANT: when overwriting "items.dat" files, all current Sygic favorites will be lost. Keep this in mind.

Notes:

• In Android devices, Sygic saves the favorites to file "items.dat" (it's a SQLite3 database). This file is located in folder "/Sygic/Res/db/items.dat" if Sygic is configured to use internal storage or in folder "/Android/data/com.sygic.aura/files/Res/db/items.dat" if Sygic is configured to use external SD card.
• This script creates a new "items.dat" file with all saved places from Google. This file needs to be copied to one of the above foldres.
• IMPORTANT: when overwriting "items.dat" files, all current Sygic favorites will be lost. Keep this in mind.