Originally Posted by
NC_Girl
The latest update deleted my navigation button completely, and the new Google Maps is horrible, it now take several clicks to get to the navigation, and crashes constantly.... I use the navigation almost every day and I hate hate hate the new maps update
Last night I went in and reverted to the original version but this morning it had automatically updated itself again.
Is there any way to permanently keep it from updating?
I am on a Nexus 7 3G.
A global setting to disable all automatic updates is described
here.
You can download the last pre-redesign version of Google Maps for Android from various places. Google Maps_6.14.3.apk to find it.
The new Maps for Android has at least one big improvement: it calculates new routes based on traffic conditions. I'm not driving a lot these days so I haven't had the chance to give it an exhaustive workout though.
Google is going overboard with "spare" design, IMO, neglecting feature discoverability in favor of an uncluttered look. That means that many features that seem to be gone are in fact still in there, just hard to find. For example, they removed the zoom buttons from the map, leading many people to complain they need two hands to zoom. You don't, though: double-long tap, then drag your finger diagonally NW to SE or vice versa.
Another hard-to-find feature is local map caching. You can enable this two ways: enter or say "OK Google now" (why that should be the magic phrase, I have no idea), or drag the Explore card that sometimes appears at the bottom up till you find the "Make this map area available offline" option.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to revert to the last pre-redesign version before I go to Europe in a few weeks, but meanwhile I'm living with the update to see whether I can figure it out.