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Google Maps is preinstalled on most Android phones, but Waze is a popular alternative many use for directions. Despite Google owning both apps, they offer different approaches to navigation with unique features that can make one a better choice for your day-to-day traveling. We explain what makes each app unique and why one or the other might be better for your navigation needs. Waze is unavailable on WearOS. If you're considering jumping into the increasingly impressive world of Android smartwatches, stick with Google Maps.
How to report speed traps and hazardous conditions in Android Auto
Android Auto makes it easy to report incidents while driving
Map applications like Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps use crowdsourced data to glean info about road conditions. They also use historical traffic patterns to determine efficient routes and make journeys easier. Community reports inform users about accidents, hazards, speed traps, lane closures, traffic incidents, and road work.
Google Maps tests showing building entrances
You might soon see exactly where you can enter a building
Google Maps has become an invaluable tool to navigate and to find the best spots to eat, get coffee, or to see sights. But with some bigger buildings and attractions, it can get hard to find the entrance. That’s where a new experiment comes in that Google appears to be testing with a few users and buildings, with an icon indicating where to exit and enter a place when it’s selected.
How to change your home address on Google Maps
It'll be handy when you need directions home after a night out
If you recently changed residences, update your home address in Google Maps. You'll find the shortest and most traffic-free routes to and from your home and locate restaurants, attractions, and local businesses in the area. Changing your residences in Google Maps is easy, whether you own a budget Android phone or a top-end device.
How to share your location on Android
Your loved ones won't have to worry about where you are anymore
Have you ever felt like your friends are lost in the sauce trying to find that new, hidden gem of a restaurant? Maps are great, but sometimes they don't cut it, especially if you're parked far away or nothing's familiar. That's where sharing your real-time location comes in handy. It guides your friends to you like a digital compass.
Google Maps is finally making glanceable directions widely available
The changes are rolling out across devices and regions
Google developers have invested significant efforts in improving the navigation experience in Maps throughout 2023, as we witnessed with the journey behind creating Immersive View. Efforts like this make Maps one of our favorite navigation apps on Android, but along the way, it also announced features like glanceable directions, which we haven’t seen on our devices yet. That is changing now, because Google Maps is becoming a lot more useful on your lock screen.
Your Wear OS watch just got a lot more useful for Maps navigation
Google also makes Google Wallet passes support for watches official
Despite Google's renewed focus on Wear OS, there's a functionality difference between many of its mobile and companion smartwatch apps. For example, you can use the Google Wallet app on your Android smartwatch to make contactless payments and show government-issued ID cards. However, support for boarding passes and event tickets was missing. Amid a barrage of Android-related updates at MWC 2024, Google announced two major Wear OS improvements, including one that fixes this annoying Google Wallet limitation.
Google Maps is a fantastic resource for getting quick directions on a Google Pixel phone or whatever phone you prefer (even if it's an iPhone).
How Google Maps shut down scammers and fake reviews with AI in 2023
Google has a new algorithm that catches fakes and spam faster
Google Maps is a big trove of information and data that many people rely on. This makes it a valuable target for scammers, spammers, and for nefarious fake reviews, leading to a constant battle between Google and those bad actors. Thanks to the help of AI, Google thinks it’s coming out on top. The company shared what advances in machine learning it made to improve Maps for everyone in 2023.
Google Maps goes to extreme lengths to create a detailed Immersive View
Cameras on planes, cars, backpacks, snowmobiles, you name it
Google Maps has been working on enhancing the navigation experience through recent changes to the color scheme for water bodies and green zones, and a change to the navigation UI which hasn’t rolled out yet. However, one of the biggest changes in our favorite navigation app came in February last year when Google introduced Immersive View for routes. It’s been a year since its launch, but we finally get to see how the company made it work.
Here's our first look at Google Maps' new generative AI recommendations
AI will guide you to the perfect place for your next outing
Google has invested plenty of resources in revamping its AI efforts since last year. We've already seen integrations within Workspace apps with the help of Duet AI. Not too long ago, the company said it was bringing AI attributes to Google Maps, beginning with Local Guides. We're now getting a first look at how Maps will go about onboarding users to this new feature addition.
Google Maps has been one of our go-to navigation apps on Android for many years, even though it hasn’t been the best at mapping areas. However, Google has kept up the cadence with regular visual updates to ensure Maps stays current, and doesn’t look out of place on the latest Android versions. Recent changes have given us location-specific weather info in the app, and new colors for water bodies and green zones which resemble iOS. Now, Google appears poised to change the layout of navigation options in Maps, which could make the UI easier to understand and interact with.
Google has efficient search tools integrated into most of its apps, and last year’s Multisearch for Lens is a prime example of the company’s general direction. Multisearch allows using multiple mixed media prompts in Lens, such as a combination of an image and text to reduce subsequent Googling and hopping between apps from the same company. Now, Maps for Android is bringing us a change along similar lines — displaying local weather conditions.
Google says Assistant Driving Mode isn't dying, but it sure seems dead to us
Don't worry, Driving Mode's app launcher is just being sent to a nice farm upstate
In a classic case of "Google kills a thing you might be relying on daily," the company recently included Assistant Driving Mode — the one-time replacement for Android Auto on phone screens that lost some serious functionality back in 2022 — on a list of soon-to-be depreciated features. A new banner confirmed as much, warning drivers that "view" would be disappearing in February. A new explanation from Google explains the specific language used for Assistant Driving Mode, but the company's backtrack doesn't exactly spare its car-friendly UI from death.
AI will soon be your personal tour guide on Google Maps
Need a local rec? Google Maps will now use AI to suggest restaurants and businesses
Indoor playgrounds? Obscure flea markets? Hipster burger joints that use donuts or grilled cheeses as buns? There could be a lot of cool — or unusual, or just helpful, or downright ridiculous — stuff hiding right on your block, and you'll soon get help from Google Maps in sniffing out the best in your neighborhood.
It's official: Google Assistant Driving Mode is shutting down
Strings within the Google app already pointed to the now-official February shutdown
Google Assistant lost more than a dozen features this January, but Google isn’t done picking its former flagship product apart. As previously revealed in strings hidden within the Google app, Google Assistant Driving Mode is shutting down in February this year. The company is rolling out a banner to the Driving Mode home screen that states as much.
Google Maps takes the guesswork out of restaurant reviews
Say goodbye to random, unlabeled food pics
We all think of Google Maps when it's time to get directions or check traffic, but it's also one of the best places to find reviews for local restaurants, in large part thanks to all the user-uploaded pictures of food and drinks. Compared to a more narrowly focused competitor like Yelp, however, Google's offering tends to have fewer descriptions attached to those pics, often leaving you wondering what exactly it is that you're looking at. A recent update looks to solve this issue.
Google Maps is an essential traveling companion thanks to its wealth of useful features. It stores a history of everything you searched and places you visited (if you turned on location data). This feature can be handy if you need to pull up something you searched before. Still, you may want to delete your Google Maps search history for privacy reasons.
Google Maps for Android debuts new Bluetooth navigation feature
Stay connected underground with the help of Bluetooth tunnel beacons
When it comes to Android navigation apps, the choices are numerous, but Google Maps remains one of the best. It integrates seamlessly into Android Auto, and its reign in the market is all thanks to its perfect combination of simplicity and accuracy. However, there is one sticking point, one that almost all navigation apps suffer from, and that is navigation in tunnels. Google Maps for Android has introduced a new tunnel navigation feature that uses Bluetooth beacons.
Google is messing with Driving Mode again, and I've had enough of this nonsense
I long for the days of Android Auto for phone screens
Google doesn't like me. That's the only assumption I can make when it consistently finds ways to make my life more difficult. Google+, Inbox, Pixelbook, these are dead Google products that I love, but at least I could find alternatives for them easily enough. The same can't be said for driving apps. Google has messed with its driving apps for the worse twice now, and it looks like it's about to happen again.