2w ago

Introducing reitti: a selfhosted alternative to Google Timeline

GitHub - dedicatedcode/reitti

Hey everyone!

I'm excited to introduce Reitti, a location tracking and analysis application designed to help you gain insights about your movement patterns and significant places—all while keeping your data private on your own server.

Core Capabilities:

Visit Tracking: Automatically recognizes and categorizes the places where you spend time, using customizable detection algorithms
Trip Analysis: Analyzes your movements between locations to understand how you travel whether by walking, cycling, or driving
Interactive Timeline: Visualizes all your past activities on an interactive timeline with map and list views that show visit duration, transport method, and distance traveled

Photo Integration:

Connect your self-hosted Immich photo server to seamlessly display photos taken at specific locations right within Reitti's timeline. The interactive photo viewer lets you browse galleries for each place.

Data Import Options:

Multiple Formats Supported: Reitti can import existing location data from GPX, GeoJSON, and Google Takeout (JSON) backups
(Near) Real-time Updates: Automatically receive location info via mobile apps like OwnTracks, GPSLogger or our REST API

Customization:

Multi-geocoding Services: Configurable options to convert coordinates to human-readable addresses using providers like Nominatim
User Profiles: Customize individual display names, password management, and API token security under your own control

Self-hosting:

Reitti is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure using Docker containers. We provide configuration templates to set up linked services like PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ and Redis that keep all your location data private.

Reitti is still early in development but has already developed extensive capabilities. I'd love to hear your feedback and answer any questions to tailor Reitti to meet the community's needs.

Hope this sparks some interest!

Daniel

110 comments

Fuck yeah this is awesome! The detail of Immich integration is just the icing on top of an awesome cake!
How demanding is it on server resources? Am I likely to be able to run it on an old Raspberry Pi that's also running a couple of other relatively light tasks? How much storage does it end up using over time? I'm probably going to try and get it running either on my Pi or my Synology NAS, though the latter has had issues with Docker containers in the past depending on the container's dependencies...
- I have no clue if a raspberry will handle it. There a a couple of services involved to make it fast, but they are then another burden like RabbitMQ. Which make ingesting data instantaneous but you need extra processing power to handle the queues. It all comes with a tradeoff.
  For size, there is mainly the PostGIS DB. I just checked and my db is around 800 MB for roughtly 8 1/2 Years of data.
  Photon (the reverse geocode enabled in the compose file) is another beast. For Germany it takes 14 GB of storage while running, if you let PARALLELL updates enabled you can double that every time the index is updated. But you can remove that from the compose file and rely on external Geocoders. It is described in https://github.com/dedicatedcode/reitti?tab=readme-ov-file#reverse-geocoding-options
  
  Oh interesting. I've just read through that link, and I was assuming that something similar to the "external only" option would have been the only way it worked. More specifically, I thought it'd just store a list of historical points and display those on an OSM overlay. But it seems like even "external only" is much more involved than that.
  What happens with self-hosted Photon if you specify a country, but then also visit another country? (I assume in hybrid mode it's as simple as "use Photon in your country, use Nominatim otherwise?)
  But yeah, definitely sounds like a Pi is probably not gonna cut it. I'll have to see if my Synology can do it, or if the weird OS restrictions Synology imposes prevent it.
- Looks to be a java application with a number of services running alongside- I don't think it's going to be lightweight to run on resource constrained devices, but sweet project anyway! (Side note, no clue how you engineers find the time to hack on things like this, I feel like I've got so little time to myself I cannot imagine dedicating it to a project like this)

My only concern is battery usage. Google has the advantage of OS integration, which skims location data for timeline history even when another app accesses location, which uses essentially no battery (since you would've been using location for that other app anyway).
But it's awesome that a tool like this exists anyways, great work.
- Thank you :)
  I understand your concerns, this is something every additional app would have to deal with.
  For me it is ok to have GPSLogger running all the time, I think for what it is doing it is quite easy on the battery but I do not use my phone actively that much and I am happy if it survives a day which it does.
  
  I log my position every 5 seconds for years and gpslogger is not among any of the battery consuming processes if you use the device. If you don't use the phone at all, it will consume more power but that's no reason not to use it.

This looks amazing, congratulations and thank you for making it FOSS. I was wondering if you are considering integrating with Home Assistant.
- Thanks :)
  No, did not occur to me. What would the integration look like? Connecting it to the message bus to receive location updates? Honestly it is a couple years ago I played with HA.
  
  Home automation using geofencing, and my partner likes to get a notification when I'm heading home from the office
  
  Location sensor would be a good minimum bar.
  A custom card for your app that is just basically a iframe into your app with auth would also be pretty decent. Your version of a map looks really nice.
  Maybe surfacing metrics of distance traveled or number of geolocations.
  I'll have to install the app and play around with it to make other recommendations but those are the first things that come to mind.
  
  I have the HA app on my phone, it reports my location back to my HA server.
  I would like if Reitti could retrieve my location from my HA server, instead of asking me to upload it again to Reitti. Uploading my location in short intervals drains the battery very fast, it's something I want to avoid if I can.
  Additiinally, I don't want to expose anything to the internet. So I pay for the Home Assistant cloud subscription that does it for me in a more secure manner than what I could implement with the little free time I have. Reitti could retrieve my location more securely if it did so without exiting my LAN.

This looks good, I'm currently using dawarich and owntracks to track our families 5 week road trip around the south island of New Zealand (https://no.lastname.nz/post/1468113). If I can find a spare moment in our travels and a good internet connection I'll try and spin up an image and test it out.
One thing that I would love is to be able to have multiple people displayed on a single map (my wife [kids when they have their own phones with data], brother, mother and a few close friends - we already use google maps for this)
- That sounds like an awesome idea, actually the data is stored for every user separately depending on the used api token or when you login and do a data import. I will create a feature request for it.
  But bear in mind, reitti is not meant to be a real-time tracking app. At the moment, data is processed every 10 minutes.
  
  Real time is nice, but not a must have at least for my use case.

I managed to break our instance. I imported several years worth of google takeout location data, and now the "stay-detection-queue" is stalled.

Congratulations 😆

To help with that I would need some information:

does it show anything in the logs?
what do you mean by several years or how big was the Records.json?

Thank you for testing 🙂

It's a 1gig json file that has about 10 years of data. I get multiple repeats of the rabbit timeout in the logs. The Job Status section tells me that it's got just under 9 hours of processing remaining for just over 16,000 in the stay-detection-queue. The numbers change slightly, so something is happening, but it's been going for over 12 hours now, and the time remaining is slowly going up, not down.

 reitti-1  | 2025-07-04T03:06:08.820Z  INFO 1 --- [ntContainer#2-1] c.d.r.s.p.VisitDetectionService          : Detected 61806 stay points for user ada

    
reitti-1  | 2025-07-04T03:06:17.848Z  WARN 1 --- [ntContainer#2-1] o.s.a.r.l.SimpleMessageListenerContainer : Consumer raised exception, processing can restart if the connection factory supports it
reitti-1  |
reitti-1  | com.rabbitmq.client.ShutdownSignalException: channel error; protocol method: #method<channel.close>(reply-code=406, reply-text=PRECONDITION_FAILED - delivery acknowledgement on channel 9 timed out. Timeout value used: 1800000 ms. This timeout value can be configured, see consumers doc guide to learn more, class-id=0, method-id=0)
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.BlockingQueueConsumer.checkShutdown(BlockingQueueConsumer.java:493) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.BlockingQueueConsumer.nextMessage(BlockingQueueConsumer.java:554) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer.doReceiveAndExecute(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1046) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer.receiveAndExecute(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1021) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer$AsyncMessageProcessingConsumer.mainLoop(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1423) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer$AsyncMessageProcessingConsumer.run(SimpleMessageListenerContainer.java:1324) ~[spring-rabbit-3.2.5.jar!/:3.2.5]
reitti-1  |     at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) ~[na:na]
reitti-1  | Caused by: com.rabbitmq.client.ShutdownSignalException: channel error; protocol method: #method<channel.close>(reply-code=406, reply-text=PRECONDITION_FAILED - delivery acknowledgement on channel 9 timed out. Timeout value used: 1800000 ms. This timeout value can be configured, see consumers doc guide to learn more, class-id=0, method-id=0)
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.ChannelN.asyncShutdown(ChannelN.java:528) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.ChannelN.processAsync(ChannelN.java:349) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQChannel.handleCompleteInboundCommand(AMQChannel.java:193) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQChannel.handleFrame(AMQChannel.java:125) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection.readFrame(AMQConnection.java:761) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection.access$400(AMQConnection.java:48) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     at com.rabbitmq.client.impl.AMQConnection$MainLoop.run(AMQConnection.java:688) ~[amqp-client-5.25.0.jar!/:5.25.0]
reitti-1  |     ... 1 common frames omitted

This looks amazing, and I will try it out once it has reasonable NixOS support.
I especially like the immich integration.
Does it increase battery consumption of the phone a lot?
- Reitti on its own does not run on your phone. It relies on external apps to track your GPS location like GPSLogger or Owntracks. They will increase the battery consumption but I think it is bearable. I personally have setup GPSLogger to fetch every 30 seconds a GPS location and then sends it every hour to reitti. With that i do not see that more power usage. Currently starting to test how the power drain is with a 15 seconds interval.
- May I ask what you mean by NixOS support? There's a docker compose you could use in their repo...
  
  But then I'd have to combine that with existing services myself. NixOS ensures that there is only one postgres running for example, such that not every service starts its own postgres instance.
  For immich, for example the following is enough for a most basic configuration:
  
  services.immich.enable = true; services.immich.port = 2283;
- Better open a package request (or pull request :D) then 😄

Cool!
I love the UI for this one, it's unique compared to the others
- Thanks otter, I tried to have a historical look. Like going to the past and revive some memories. Hope it worked out. I am actually pretty happy with it.

This is really awesome! I was just about to start looking for something like this, so great timing. Going to get this up on my Unraid server tomorrow and play around with it

Visually this is gorgeous
Really nice work!

That looks very neat. Thanks for starting this!
I guess this will directly compete with dawarich, right?
https://github.com/Freika/dawarich
- I would not say compete. They are different in how things are done from my point of view. I want to focus more on the visits we have done in the past to relive some lost memories whereas Dwarich looks more "technical" for me. I have no better words for it, I hope you get my point in what i am trying to achieve with Reitti. So there should be enough room for both 🙂
  I also do not have any intentions to offer a hosted version in the foreseeable future or even anytime.
  
  I get what you mean. The focus is different of dawarich. I'm really looking forward into checking reitti out!

Very very cool! I see that you can import GPX files: can you also do the opposite, i.e., export a GPX file for a selected time range?
- I was thinking about that, but the main problem is that we do not store all the data which comes in.
  If we ingest data from an app, I am pretty sure that the quality of the data is actually usable. But for example if we import an Records.json from Google Takeout. The quality of the earlier years is somewhat sketchy. For this we filter out some points like travelling with over 2000 km/h, sudden direction changes etc and they are lost forever. At least for Reitti they are unknown.
  The feature would need a lot of explanation why the data we export is not the same we import.That is the reason I did not implemented it even if it would come in handy for testing stuff. Handling GPX files is a pita ...
  
  I understand. Currently, I'm using the NextCloud's extension Phonetrack, and one on my main use cases is to export GPX files to use them in Darktable and add geotracking information to the pictures I shoot with my camera. It works well, actually, but Phonetrack is not too intuitive and does not offer many other features: that's why I was looking with interest at this alternative!

This is really neat, I'm going to spin it up tomorrow!
- Let me know how it worked out. I am deploying it to my server via docker without an problems, but maybe they are some quirks i missed. :D
  
  Of course, happy to do so. I'll report back with my experience when I have it working!

What's the difference from Dawarich, if I may ask? Beside from a better name :)
- Thanks :) As a German I really like the name Dawarich. First it sound really nice for me but also that "Da war ich" means "There have i been" in german makes, at least for me, an awesome project name.
  Take this with a grain of salt because I have no idea what the plans are for Dawarich or have ever been and this is solely based on my external view. For me the main differences are:
  visits and trips are our main data, everything else is just the way to calculate them. For Dawarich it looks to me, that it is the other way around. It displays all the location data in good way with the heatmap and so on but visits or places seems so tacked on. This should not be an offense against it. I actually still have an instance running and it was the main pushing point to finally start working on Reitti.
  the sleek UI but this depends on your taste
  In the end, they are not that far off. Maybe a matter of taste.
  
  Maybe slightly off-topic, but how did you end up with the name "reitti"? You say you're German - do you have some sort of tie to the Finnish language?
  
  Thanks for the reply! I will give it a go :)
  The word dawarich does not produce a polite sound in my main language, meant no offense to the project :)

This looks awesome! I'd just been collect my GPS data thinking one day I'd analyze/visualize it on my own-- not expecting anyone else to make a such a comprehensive program. The UI looks really slick. I'm looking forward to testing it out. Hopefully this weekend. Thank you for this!
- Let me know how it works out for you. If you have the gpx files, you can simply import them inside the settings menu.

I still have a phone containing Google, and cannot change this situation (maybe with my next phone). Usually, I switch off location services very often and I avoid such tracking apps because all my data goes to Google then.
Would it be advisable to use this at all before I get rid of Google?
- Hello @Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org, i usually use GPSLogger for Android to track my location during the day and this periodically sends the data to reitti whenever i am back at home. I have no idea if you switch off location services what happens on the GPSLogger side of the chain. If it still be able to access GPS I see no problem, if not than this sadly will break the usecase for reitti.
  It relies on a consistent GPS tracking data to be able to do its thing
  
  if you switch off location services
  ...then no app gets a location anymore.

Hell yes! I turned off location data for immich but now I can use this!
- It is actually awesome if you have some old photos with the geodata attached and scim through Reitti and suddenly one of them shows up :)

I'd love to see an integration with PhotoStructure in addition to Immich.
- Never heard of PhotoStructure but if they provide an API where i can search assets for a day and it also returns the exif data especially latitutde and longitude it should be pretty straight forward to implement. Feel free to add a feature request when you got time and I will have a look at it :)

I've been putting off setting up an immich server. Would this do well if hosted on the same machine?

This is a bit of a long shot. Does this work with tracking devices? I'm looking for a degoogled way to track my cat and somebody linked me here.
- Greetings, @Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz, that sounds like a truly wonderful idea, and as a fellow cat owner, it brings me great joy to hear about it. 😻
  In fact, I have recently changed the analysis of data, which is now performed in near real-time as soon as new data becomes available. I am currently working on the functionality to display multiple users (or, in your case, Pandora) on the map, which should be beneficial to your idea.
  Now, the primary question is, how can we integrate the data from the tracker into Reitti. Thats something I have no idea at the moment. Do you have any Infos about that?
  
  I'm not very IT savy so I'm not sure if I have anything to contribute. In general there's various trackers on the market. Some use GPS, some use Bluetooth and some use radio. All of them have respective proprietary apps. Maybe looking into these apps could give some insight?
  The Nut tracker (GPS) is only 15 € and I can at least open the app on my degoogled phone.

I am slightly bothered by how the logo is quite off-center, is it intentional?
- It was not intentional but after bothering not about it because i had other things on my mind i got used to it and now like it the way it is.
  But for everyone who is bothered by that. If Reitti reaches 1k stars on Github I will add a switch to use a centered one 😊

I love that it supports multiple formats for important location as well as multiple geocoders. But that makes me wonder, would it be feasible to support multiple image libraries? There's a bunch of different FOSS photo libraries out there. I think Nextcloud is the main other one I've heard about 'in the wild', as it were. Or is there too much bespoke Immich code in there for that to be a simple plug-and-play option?
- no, that would not be a problem as soon as the other image library has an api reitti could query. It just happens that I am settled with immich and had no other needs at the moment.
  If you need a specific one, drop a feature request and I will have a look.
  
  I don't actually have any personally. I'm still with Google Photos for now and hadn't decided what to switch to, with Immich, Nextcloud, and the non-open Synology Photos being the top of my list. Legitimately, what a tool like this supports could be a factor I use to help decide.
  How complicated is the code interfacing with Immich? Is it a piece someone not familiar with your overall code base could relatively easily pick up and make a pull request for?

This looks really cool! I just have one question. Is it possible to just install this like normal software on a Linux machine or does it require Docker?
- Thank you.
  At the moment i do not have any plans of providing a way of running it without docker. Mainly because of time to support that.
  Since it is a Spring-Boot-Application it would be possible to create a jar file which you can execute or deploy as a service with systemd. But then you have to make sure all prerequisites are also running. That is the one thing I like about docker and especially docker compose.
  But short answer: Yes, it is possible but you are on your own at the moment. I would help and maybe we can add a section to the readme how to do it.
  
  Not sure if you know about it and I haven't used it myself yet, but being able to create native executables could be relatively easy with this
  https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/packaging/native-image/index.html

Got it up and running, looks neat!
Is there a way to import old pictures from Immich? If I take new ones they do show up on Reitti, but none of the old ones are shown.
- Thank you for testing Reitti. 🙏
  It depends on two key requirements for Reitti:
  First, it finds all photos from Immich taken on the day you selected.
  Then, it filters these photos based on the selected map bounds, using the embedded EXIF geolocation data (where the photo was shot).
  If the EXIF data does not contain geolocation information, we currently cannot display those photos because their placement on the map cannot be determined.
  Could you please verify in Immich if the expected photo has its location in the metadata? If it is available there, then the issue might lie in how Reitti is parsing that specific data.
  
  Thanks for the explanation! Seems to work correctly after all, pictures do show up when I change the date on timeline instead of just staring at current date, 👍 Had just not understood how to use Reitti properly.
- Hi LazyToad,
  it depends. Reitti on its own does not import any pictures. It only shows fetches them from Immich. For that to work it needs the geolocation where the image was taken in the exif data. You need to check if your expected image has this data in Immich. If it is available it shoud be displayed on the map if you select the day the picture was taken.
  Does it show the location in Immich? You can verify this if you open the image in Immich and let it display the Info.
  If it is showing, then it still could be that it is a bug in Reitti. Feel free to open an issue then :)

Dear OP,
I just spent some time setting up Reitti and I am very pleased with the results. Many thanks for all the work and great documentation.
I do have a few questions:
You mention that it can take hours to days for Photon to setup. How do I know its done?
The default external reverse geocoding is not doing anything for me, but there seems little to no info in the logs for me to try any remedy. Related to my previous comment, how would I know that photon is working correct?
Is it possible to enjoy the map view in color in stead of the black and white?
Thanks for your time.
- Cool, thanks for the feedback.
  For: 1: There should be something about downloading in the Photon logs. You can check with docker compose logs photon. I do not remember how long it took to download the index for Germany, but it was noticeable. It depends a lot on how you are connected to the internet and then how long it takes to extract the index.
  2: You should also see that in the log of Photon. If the default does not work reliably, you can create an account on Geoapify; it is free, and you get 3000 reverse geocode requests per day. I personally have Photon for DE and then the default service and additional Geoapify.
  3: Yeah, I was also thinking about that. In the end, a per-user setting and then the overlay should be disabled, but it could take a while until I can get to it.
  
  Thanks a bunch for your time and answers! Ill have another go later this week and try to report back here. GPS logger and immich work flawless!

Having all of this data stored in a location I can control has been really good.
But yesterday, it was pointed out to me that the API reitti provides means I have access to over a decades worth of location history that I can use to geotag my photo collection! That is a game changer. I've been trying to find a way to pull that information from google location history for a long time, and it turns out, you've created it!
This is really valuable to me, so I want you to know just how much I appreciate the effort you've put in to making it. Thank you
- Thank you very much for these kind words. Means a lot to me if my little tool brings value to you :)

Saving for later
- Samesies

Congrats! Amazing project, exciting interface and you went the extra mile on the integration side with third parties. Kudos!
Edit: I'll definitely have to try it out!

Docker-dependent? It looks fantastic, but I have no containers in my home-lab -- and it's based on my time managing OS security for an OS. I'm stuck living vicariously through the rest of you, so report back often.

Great project! Any recommendations for an iOS app for this? I've been using OwnTracks, but it works very unreliably. As far as I understand, it's an OS problem since Apple allows for very limited background processing for the sake of saving battery, so there's not much any logging apps can do, but I was just curious if someone found a way around it.
- Not really, I stopped using IOS a year ago because of exactly this reason. Had a lot of problems syncing files because of the power saving. I understand why IOS is doing it and for a normal user I think it is the way to go. But anything beyond that, it only hinders the experience you get out of apps. Maybe someone here as any experience with an app which works reliably.

I've got a question about how reitti calculates significant places/visits.
I was thinking of adjust gps logger so that it doesn't log points if they're within 10m of the last point it logged. That will clear up the data when I'm at home or work, so that there is less of a random squiggle of location data. It will record me arriving at home, and leaving home, but not much in between.
Will that impact how reitti calculates locations though? Is it looking at the number of points, or is it simply a matter of duration within a particular vicinity?
- Hi ada,
  yes, this will impact the visit calculation. Visits are calculated in building clusters of at least 5 points in a range of 100m over a duration of at least 5 minutes. If there is only one point logged for example at work or home, Reitti is not able to detect when you left it because every point is just an instant in time and does not carry any duration information with it.
  The more points we have to calculate Visits the more accurate it will be. I personally have set up GPSLogger to log every 30 seconds no matter how far I travelled but with at least 40m of accuracy.

Is there any way of forcing it to rebuild places and trips? Somewhere along the line, most of mine disappeared. It's still building new ones just fine as GPS logger adds real time data, but most of my historical stuff is gone.
The actual data is there, and it shows up fine on the maps for each day, but the places/trips/stats etc are mostly empty.
I can't see anything in the logs that might explain it
- If you are running Reitti with Docker, you can set the environment variable DANGEROUS_LIFE to true. This will enable a new section in the Settings. There, you can use the button 'Clear and Reprocess'. This will delete all visits and trips and set all raw data points to unprocessed. During the next run, everything will be recalculated. In that settings section, you could also press the 'Start Processing' button if you don't want to wait. Make sure to wait until the success message appears. It can take a while until all data is deleted and switched to unprocessed.

- I have no experience with traccar but it seems that it supports live tracking. This is something Reitti does not support. Depends on your usecase, but i think traccar is better suited.

Man. I have no use for this. I know where I go. I go to work. And then the gym. Almost every day. Because I work a lot.
It's like my boss always says....."BACK TO WORK, DICKHEAD!"

110 comments