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There’s a bit of fuss about iPhones tracking their owners location history.

The instructions on that page are pretty involved. Here’s a command-line-free method to get at that controversial little file:

 

  1. Download and open iPhone Backup Extractor
  2. Click "Read Backups" and select the most recent backup from the list that appears
  3. A list of app identifiers will be shown. Choose the one that says "iOS Files" and click Extract
  4. Choose a location for extraction and wait a minute while the app does it's thing
  5. In the finder, navigate to <extracted folder location>/Library/Caches/locationd
  6. Open the file "consolidated.db" in your SQLite editor of choice. I recommend the one we make

That SQLite database uses the R*Tree extension. Check out the SQLite documentation on how to efficiently query it.