Searches is a book made with Google search entries. It’s like a diary you didn’t know you were writing. More info at ishback.com/searches
- Go to https://history.google.com. You’ll need to enter your Google email and password if you’re not logged in yet.
- In the ‘Web & App Activity’ section, click on the icon with the three dots on the top right corner, and click ‘Download searches’.
- Choose ‘Create archive’. You will receive an email from Google when the archive is ready to download.
- Unzip the archive. You should get a folder ‘Searches’ that contains index.html and another folder ‘Searches’
The book is generated with DrawBot, a free application for Mac.
- To download DrawBot, go to http://www.drawbot.com/content/download.html.
searches.py is a python script that takes your searches and creates a book.
- Download searches.py from here:
- Place searches.py in the same directory than the folder you unzipped, ‘Searches’ (where the index.html is).
- Open searches.py with Drawbot. Press ⌘+R to run the script. The book will appear on the left side.
- To save the book in PDF, go to File > Export as PDF. You can also print the book directly from DrawBot.
By default, the script will create a book of your 2015 searches. If you wish to create a book for past years, change the year in line 6.