[HN Gopher] Show HN: Timelinize - Privately organize your own da...
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Show HN: Timelinize - Privately organize your own data from
everywhere, locally
Hey HN -- thanks for showing interest in this. Happy to collaborate
on this project. I'm hoping to get it stable soon so my own family
can start using it. I've been working on this for about 10+ years,
nights and weekends. It's been really slow going since I only have
my own personal data to test it with. I just don't love that my
data is primarily stored on someone else's computer up in the
cloud. I want my own local copy at least. And while I can download
exports from my various accounts, I don't want them to just gather
dust and rot on my hard drive. So, Timelinize helps keep that data
alive and relevant and in my control. I don't have as much worry if
my cloud accounts go away. Hopefully you'll find it useful, and I
hope we can collaborate. (PS. I'm open to changing the name. Never
really liked this one...)
Author : mholt
Score : 284 points
Date : 2025-10-07 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (timelinize.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (timelinize.com)
| akersten wrote:
| This is an amazing idea but do I have to run Google takeout every
| time I want to update the data[0]? Unfortunately that's such a a
| cumbersome process that I don't think I'd use this. But if my
| timeline could update in near real time this would be a killer
| app
|
| [0]: https://timelinize.com/docs/data-sources/google-photos
| mholt wrote:
| Yeah. Major thorn in my side. I spent hours trying to automate
| that process by using Chrome headless, and it kinda worked,
| until I realized that I needed to physically authenticate not
| just once, but every 10 minutes. So, it basically can't be
| automated since 2FA is needed so often.
|
| In practice, I do a Takeout once or twice a year. (I recommend
| this even if not using Timelinize, so you can be sure to have
| your data.)
| akersten wrote:
| Some kind of companion app that runs on my phone and streams
| the latest data (photos, location history, texts, etc ) back
| to the timeline would probably be more tractable for live
| updates. But that is probably a wildly different scope than
| the import based workflow. This is very cool regardless.
| mholt wrote:
| For sure.
|
| About 5-6 years ago, Timelinize actually used only the
| Google Photos API. It didn't even support imports from
| Takeout yet. The problem is the API strips photos of
| crucial metadata including location, and gives you nerfed
| versions of your data. Plus the rate limits were so
| unbearable, I eventually ripped this out.
|
| But yeah, an app that runs on your phone would be a nice
| QoL improvement.
| _flux wrote:
| Syncthing from phone to a directory on PC?
|
| That's what I do. Though I don't then put them into any
| system. Yet.
| clueless wrote:
| How easy would it be to integrate this with immich (instead
| of needing the access to google photo)?
| mholt wrote:
| Probably not hard. Timelinize's data sources have a
| standard API with just 2 methods [0], so it should be
| fairly trivial to implement depend on how accessible Immich
| is.
|
| To clarify, you don't grant access to Google Photos, you
| just do the Takeout from https://takeout.google.com to
| download your data first.
|
| [0]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/timelinize/timelinize@v0
| .0.23/...
| sroussey wrote:
| I did this by creating my own small password manager.
| whistle650 wrote:
| I thought you could set up an automatic Takeout export
| periodically, and choose the target to be your Google Drive.
| Then via a webapp oauth you could pull the data that way.
| Frequency was limited (looks like it says the auto export is
| "every 2 months for 1 year"). So hardly realtime, but seems
| useful and (relatively) easy? Does a method like that not
| work for your intentions?
| mholt wrote:
| Will have to look into that. Sounds like it could be
| expensive but maybe worth it.
| robinwassen wrote:
| You can schedule the takeout to Drive, then use a tool
| such as rclone (amazing tool) to pull it down.
|
| It should not add any costs except the storage for the
| takeout zip on drive.
|
| Look at supported providers in rclone and you might find
| easy solutions for some hard sync problems:
| https://rclone.org/#providers
| mholt wrote:
| _> except the storage for the takeout zip on drive._
|
| Yeah, that's the cost I'm talking about. It essentially
| amounts to paying an extra subscription to be able to
| download your data [on a regular basis].
|
| I'm a big rclone fan btw :) I'm sure there's some future
| where we do something like this to automate Takeouts.
| BinaryIgor wrote:
| Interesting; how easy is it to backup it up somewhere - yes, on a
| cloud for example - and then restore/sync it on another machine?
| Is the data format portable and easy to move like this?
| mholt wrote:
| Yep -- a timeline is just a folder with regular files and
| folders in it. They're portable across OSes. I've tried to
| account for differences in case-sensitive and -insensitive file
| systems as well. So you can copy/move them and back them up
| like you would any other directory.
| junon wrote:
| I had this same idea for a long time. Even took github.com/center
| for it (I've since changed how it's being used). Cool to see
| someone actually achieve it, well done.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I've always wanted this but not enough to build it. I wonder if I
| can integrate this with my Monica instance. Thank you! I'm going
| to try it.
| mholt wrote:
| Will be curious how you use it. I plan to integrate local LLM
| at some point but it's still nebulous in my head.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Oh yeah, mholt is notable for having created Caddy (the
| webserver). My interest in Timelineize just went up.
| mhamann wrote:
| Cool idea. Thanks for sharing. I was really annoyed by the way
| Google nerfed the maps timeline stuff last year. Obviously this
| project is way more ambitious than that, but just goes to show
| you how little Google cares about the longevity of your data.
| ChrisbyMe wrote:
| Very cool! I have a sketchy pipeline for exporting my data from
| Gmaps to my personal site and always thought about building
| something like this.
|
| This could be a really interesting as a digital forensics thing.
| LatticeAnimal wrote:
| Beautiful app. Surprised to see JQuery for your frontend; brings
| back good old memories.
| mholt wrote:
| Ha, thanks it's actually AJQuery, just a two line shim to gain
| the $ sugar. Otherwise vanilla JS.
| TheTaytay wrote:
| Sounds really cool. I've been wanting something like this. Kudos
| for building it!
|
| I don't see the link to the rep on on first glance of the linked
| site, so linking it here:
| https://github.com/timelinize/timelinize
| TheTaytay wrote:
| I really like the local storage of this. Files and folders are
| the best!
|
| (When noodling on this, I've also been wondering about putting
| metadata for files in sidecar files next to the files they
| describe, rather than a centralized SQLite database. Did you
| experiment with anything like that by any chance?)
| mholt wrote:
| Why sidecar metadata files? In general I've tried to minimize
| the number of files on disk since that makes copying slow and
| error-prone. (A future version of Timelinize will likely
| support storing ALL the data in a DB to make for faster, easier
| copying.) We'd still need a DB for the index anyway, which
| essentially becomes a copy of the metadata.
| sureglymop wrote:
| This is great. I want this but for much more. I want it to also
| be a nextcloud and zotero replacement, storing all my documents
| and books and documenting when I added, opened, edited them. I
| want it to store all notes that I write. I want it to record and
| display all browser tabs I open, when I do so, everything I copy
| and paste, every key I press. I want a record of everything I do
| in the digital world that is searchable and that can answer the
| question: "what was I working on 2 weeks ago on this day?" and
| bring back all the context also.
|
| For obvious reasons this has to be self hosted and managed. I'm
| not interested in creating surveillance software or technology.
|
| It sounds extreme but whenever I have seen peoples obsidian set
| ups with heaps of manual and bidirectional linking I always
| thought that time is the one thing we should look at. If I look
| up some concept on wikipedia today, there is a higher chance of
| me looking up related concepts or working on something related to
| that around this time also.
| mholt wrote:
| _> I want it to also be a nextcloud and zotero replacement,
| storing all my documents and books and documenting when I
| added, opened, edited them. I want it to store all notes that I
| write._
|
| Sounds in-scope so far. Long-term, perhaps, and maybe optional
| add-on features rather than built-in, but we'll see.
|
| _> I want it to record and display all browser tabs I open,
| when I do so, everything I copy and paste, every key I press._
|
| That is possible in theory, but for me personally that's just
| _too_ detailed. :D I wouldn 't need all that granularity,
| myself.
|
| But hey, the vision is pretty similar. We are generating all
| sorts of data to document and understand our lives -- we don't
| even have to deliberately write a journal -- but we have no way
| of comprehending it. This app is an attempt to solve that.
| ignoramous wrote:
| _Timelinize_ looks rad. Congratulations.
|
| > _That is possible in theory, but for me personally that 's
| just too detailed. :D I wouldn't need all that granularity,
| myself._
|
| Think this can go quite far with just the browsing history &
| content of viewed webpages.
| mholt wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, I agree. Someone already implemented a Firefox
| history data source; I don't think it includes the
| _content_ of the pages, but that could be interesting.
| sureglymop wrote:
| > That is possible in theory, but for me personally that's
| just too detailed. :D I wouldn't need all that granularity,
| myself.
|
| I do see that. I think for that reason it would be cool to
| support a kind of extension system for arbitrary
| "collectors". And then solid filtering to filter data.
|
| The vision is definitely similar. I am very pleasantly
| surprised to see your project. And I also like your
| ideas/roadmap on the website. I know you are building this
| for yourself/your family but I certainly would be open to
| contribute to it.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I think Microsoft has some kind of product that can help you
| Recall what you were working on?
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Hey - this is awesome. I've been working on a small local app
| like this to import financial data and present a dashboard, for
| the family to use together (wife and I). So yeah - great work
| here, taking control of your data.
|
| I'm curious about real-time data, or cron jobs, though. I love
| the idea of importing my data into this, but it would be nicer if
| I could set it up to automatically poll for new data somehow.
| Does Timelineize do something like that? I didn't see on the
| page.
| mholt wrote:
| Cool, yeah, the finance use case seems very relevant. Someday
| it'd be cool to have a Finance exploration page, like we do for
| other kinds of data.
|
| Real-time/polling imports aren't yet supported, but that's not
| too difficult once we land on the right design for that
| feature.
|
| I tinkered with a "drop zone" where you could designate a
| folder that, when you add files to it, Timelinize immediately
| imports it (then deletes the file from the drop zone).
|
| But putting imports on a timer would be trivial.
| phito wrote:
| That's great, I've been running a timeline of my life in excel, I
| wonder if this could replace it.
| coolelectronics wrote:
| I've been basically doing this for years via a private mastodon
| instance. Very nice to see!
| Tepix wrote:
| Nice project! If you don't like "timelinize" - have you looked at
| latin names? Perhaps something like Temperi?
|
| In terms of Features, i'd like to see support for FindPenguins. A
| lot of interesting data (photos, videos, GPS coordinates, text)
| is already there.
| mholt wrote:
| A few latin names have been suggested, but nothing has stuck.
| The problem is they are usually difficult to spell and
| pronounce, which isn't really an improvement over the current
| situation :)
|
| FindPenguins is cool! I don't use it myself, but anyone is
| welcome to implement a data source for it.
| mtyurt wrote:
| Very nice project! Curiousity question: since you are taking data
| dumps once-twice a year, and let's say you also copy the photos
| as well, do you do any updates incrementally or just replace the
| old one with new dump?
| mholt wrote:
| Timelinize doesn't import duplicates by default, so you can
| just import the whole new Takeout and it will only keep what is
| new.
|
| But you have control over this:
|
| - You can customize what makes an item a duplicate or unique
|
| - You can choose whether to update existing items, and how to
| update them (what to keep of the incoming item versus the
| existing one)
| coffeecoders wrote:
| Love the grind! One suggestion would be to add a demo link with
| some test data so we can see it in action.
|
| I am also slowly "offlining" my life. Currently, it is a mix of
| synology, hard drives and all.
|
| I have always thought about building a little dashboard to access
| everything really. Build a financial dashboard[1] and now onto
| photos.
|
| [1] https://github.com/neberej/freemycash/
| mholt wrote:
| A live demo would be great, but I'm not sure how to generate
| the fake data in a way that imitates real data patterns. That's
| originally how I wanted to demo things, but the results weren't
| compelling. (It was a half-hearted effort, I admit.) So I
| switched to obfuscating real data.
|
| FreeMyCash looks great! Yours is the second financial
| application I've heard of; maybe we need to look at adding some
| finance features soon.
| wizzard0 wrote:
| Wow that's great! Interesting if it's possible to use not just a
| folder but like a s3-compatible backend for photos and for db
| backups as well
|
| (I don't think all my photo/video archives would fit on my
| laptop, though the thumbnails definitely would, while minio or
| something replicated between my desktop plus a backup machine at
| Hetzner or something would definitely do the thing)
| mholt wrote:
| I don't think sqlite runs very well on S3 file systems. I think
| it would also be insufferably slow.
|
| I even encountered crashes within sqlite when using ExFAT -- so
| file system choice is definitely important! (I've since
| implemented a workaround for this bug by detecting exfat and
| configuring sqlite to avoid WAL mode, so it's just... much
| slower.)
| wizzard0 wrote:
| Definitely not sqlite-on-s3! Just for the photos and videos,
| and the periodic db backups
| mholt wrote:
| I see... that might make it hard to keep all the data
| together, which is one of the goals. But I will give it
| some thought.
| kevinsync wrote:
| As for branding, IMO you could go a bunch of directions:
|
| Timelines
|
| Tempor (temporal)
|
| Chronos
|
| Chronografik
|
| Continuum
|
| Momentum (moments, memory, momentum through time)
|
| IdioSync (kinda hate this one tbh)
|
| Who knows! Those are just the ones that fell out of my mouth
| while typing. It's just gotta have a memorable and easy-to-
| pronounce cadence. Even "Memorable" is a possibility LOL
|
| -suggestions from some dude, not ChatGPT
| kevinsync wrote:
| Dateline (with the Dateline NBC theme song playing quietly in
| the background while you browse your history and achievements)
| infogulch wrote:
| Momenta
| petepete wrote:
| Scribe? As in the person who writes the timeline.
| rixed wrote:
| Like others I really like the idea and the realisation looks
| great too!
|
| I might not be the typical user for this, because I'd prefer my
| data to actually stay in the cloud where it is, but I'd still
| like to have it _indexed_ and timelined. Can timelinize do this?
| Like, instead of downloading everything from gphoto, youtube,
| bluesky, wtv, just index what 's there and offer the same
| interface? And only optionnaly download the actual data in
| addition to the meta-data?
| mholt wrote:
| That's not really aligned with my vision/goals, which is to
| bring my data home; but to be clear, downloading your data
| doesn't mean it has to leave the cloud. You can have your cake
| and eat it too.
|
| The debate between importing he data and indexing external data
| is a long, grueling one, but ultimately I cannot be satisfied
| with not having my data guaranteed to be locally available.
|
| I suppose in the future it's possible we could add the ability
| to index external data, but this likely wouldn't work well in
| practice since most data sources lock down real-time access via
| their API restrictions.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Nice one, thanks for sharing. For sure I'll give it a try.
|
| Have you thought of creating a setup so as to package all
| libraries and dependencies needed? You have a very nice
| installation guide, but there are many users who just want the
| setup.exe :-)
| mholt wrote:
| Thank you! Not sure I can package everything because of license
| requirements. IANAL. I think the container image basically
| automates the various dependencies, but I didn't create it and
| I don't use it so I'm not 100% sure.
|
| Basically, I would love to know how to do this correctly for
| each platform, but I don't know how. Help would be welcomed.
| codethief wrote:
| This looks really cool and like something I've been
| subconsciously looking for!
|
| A couple thoughts & ideas:
|
| - Given the sensitivity of the data, I would be rather scared to
| self-host this, unless it's a machine at home, behind a
| Wireguard/Tailscale setup. I would love to see this as an
| E2E-encrypted application, similarly to Ente.io.
|
| - Could index and storage backend be decoupled, so that I can
| host my photos etc. elsewhere and, in particular, prevent data
| duplication? (For instance, if you already self-host Immich or
| Ente.io and you also set up backups, it'd be a waste to have
| Timelinize store a separate copy of the photos IMO.) I know, this
| is not entirely trivial to achieve but for viewing & interacting
| with different types of data there are already tons of
| specialized applications out there. Timelinized can't possibly
| replace all of them.
|
| - Support for importing Polarsteps trips, and for importing
| Signal backups (e.g. via https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-
| tools ) would be nice!
| mholt wrote:
| Great comment, thanks for the questions.
|
| _> unless it 's a machine at home,_
|
| This is, in fact, the intended model.
|
| The problem with _any_ other model, AFAIK, is that someone else
| has access to your data unless I implement an encrypted live
| database, like with homomorphic encryption, but even then, I 'm
| sure at some places it would have to be decrypted in memory in
| places (like, transcoding videos or encoding images, for
| starters), and the physical owner of the machine will always
| have access to that.
|
| I just don't think any other way of doing it is really feasible
| to truly preserve your privacy. I am likely wrong, but if so, I
| also imagine it's very tedious, nuanced, error-prone, and
| restrictive.
|
| (Or maybe I'm just totally wrong!)
|
| _> - Could index and storage backend be decoupled, so that I
| can host my photos etc. elsewhere and, in particular, prevent
| data duplication?_
|
| I know this is contentious for some, but part of the point is
| to duplicate/copy your data _into_ the timeline. It acts as a
| backup, and it ensures consistency, reliability, and
| availability.
|
| Apps like PhotoStructure do what you describe -- and do a good
| job of indexing external content. I just think that's going to
| be hard to compel in Timelinize.
|
| _> Support for importing Polarsteps trips, and for importing
| Signal backups (e.g. via
| https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools ) would be nice!_
|
| Agreed! I played with Signal exports for a while but the format
| changed enough that it was difficult to rely on this as a data
| source. Especially since it's not just obvious what changes,
| it's _encryption_ so it 's kind of a black box.
|
| That said, anyone is welcome to contribute more data sources. I
| will even have an import API at some point, so the data sources
| don't have to be compiled in. Other scripts or programs could
| push data to Timelinize.
|
| Just to reiterate, one of the main goals of Timelinize is to
| _have_ your data. It may mean some duplication, but I 'm OK
| with that. Storage is getting cheap enough, and even if it's
| expensive, it's worth it.
| codethief wrote:
| Thanks for your thoughtful response!
|
| > I just don't think any other way of doing it is really
| feasible to truly preserve your privacy. I am likely wrong,
| but if so, I also imagine it's very tedious, nuanced, error-
| prone, and restrictive.
|
| It's certainly not easy but I wouldn't go as far as saying it
| requires homomorphic encryption. Have you had a look at what
| the Ente.io people do? Even though everything is
| E2E-encrypted, they have (purely local) facial recognition,
| which to me sounds an order of magnitude harder (compute-
| intensive) than building a chronological index/timeline. But
| maybe I'm missing something here, which isn't unlikely, given
| that I'm not the person who just spent a decade building this
| very cool tool.
|
| > It acts as a backup, and it ensures consistency,
| reliability, and availability.
|
| Hmmm, according to you[0],
|
| > Timelinize is an archival tool, not a backup utility.
| Please back up your timeline(s) with a proper backup tool.
|
| ;)
|
| I get your point, though, especially when it comes to
| reliability & availability. Maybe the deduplication needs to
| happen at a different level, e.g. at the level of the file
| system (ZFS etc.) or at least at the level of backups (i.e.
| have restic/borgbackup deduplicate identical files in the
| backed-up data).
|
| Then again, I can't say I have not had wet dreams once or
| twice of a future where apps & their persistent data simply
| refer to user files through their content hashes, instead of
| hard-coding paths & URLs. (Prime example: Why don't m3u
| playlist files use hashes to become resistant against file
| renamings? Every music player already indexes all music
| files, _anyway_. Sigh.)
|
| > Especially since it's not just obvious what changes, it's
| _encryption_ so it 's kind of a black box.
|
| Wouldn't you rather diff the data _after_ decrypting the
| archive?
|
| > Just to reiterate, one of the main goals of Timelinize is
| to _have_ your data. It may mean some duplication, but I 'm
| OK with that. Storage is getting cheap enough, and even if
| it's expensive, it's worth it.
|
| I suspect it will lead to duplication of pretty much _all_
| user data (i.e. original storage requirements x 2), at least
| if you 're serious about your timeline. However, I see your
| point, it might very well be a tradeoff that's worth it.
|
| [0]: https://timelinize.com/docs/importing-data
| sdotdev wrote:
| Nice work. I've been frustrated with how closed off location
| history tools have become lately. This looks like a solid step
| toward giving people real ownership of their data again.
| Definitely checking this out.
| throwrb wrote:
| For a name, how about 'Rain Barrel' ? Your own personal cloud
| willwade wrote:
| Yeah I totally want this. How much data are we talking about on
| average?
| john_minsk wrote:
| Amazing project. In the era of AI I can see the software like
| this being used daily.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Congratulations, good work, and good luck, "TickTock" might be an
| appropriate name.
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