I was having trouble switching on location history, or web history, on my Google apps for work account (domain).

I searched and found lots of people that had also struggled, but no solution. Eventually, it was quite straightforward. I hope this might help someone else in the future.

On an Android device, you activate this by going to ‘Settings’ – ‘Google’ – ‘Personal info & privacy’ – ‘Activity controls’ – ‘Web & app activity’. 

However, I was told that I couldn’t do this based on my organisation’s permissions. As the owner of my account, I hadn’t set this up to be turned off, so I wanted to change it. 

Steps:

1 – Go to admin.google.com and log in as an administrator on your apps for work domain.

2 – Go to Apps – Additional Services. This gives a long list of services, most of which were set to ‘on for everyone’. This included ‘Location history’. However, in the end, there was one that was set to ‘off’:’Web history’. Change this to ‘on for everyone’ (or ‘some users’, as you wish). You will now be able to change the setting on your device. Google say it can take up to 24 hours to feed through, but mine worked immediately. 

3 – Now, if the above worked, you won’t need this step. For me, I didn’t see the ‘Web history’ setting immediately. At first, Google support told me to set ‘Location history’ to on and wait for 24 hours. I did this, but still couldn’t change the setting on my device. Upon returning to the apps for work admin section 24 hours later, at the bottom of the list of ‘Additional services’ was ‘Web history’, set to ‘off’. I now turned it on, and everything worked! 

So, either, the setting was there all along and I just didn’t see it (possible…), or forcing the ‘Location history’ setting made it appear for some reason (seems unlikely, but can’t be sure). 

Either way, if you’re reading this, hopefully it helps you!