Google Maps Update. I HATE IT!!
 

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 :mad:

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.

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I used to be the biggest Google fan but I am getting fed up...... I don't use Facebook and am REALLY sick and tired of Google trying to FORCE me Into using Google+

I am thinking of trashing everything Gmail, Picasa and Google but where oh where to go?

I always load the basic gmail because the current version is awful. The basic version is friendlier when trying to forward messages too.

I've had a similar experience with the updated Google Maps. Why in the world would it assume you want to navigate from anywhere other than where you are when you enter the app? Also, why would it assume that searches you run on the Google Maps website are, in any way, relevant to where you want to go when you use the navigate app? It's also much harder to see the "time remaining" estimate, which is now a thin black font on a white background that spans the entire screen.

The only thing I like is the ability to have traffic and satellite view on in the main navigation screen.

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.

The older version did that, too.

That's good to know! Thanks for sharing this tip.

Me, too.

I just ended up resetting my home Nexus 7 to factory default then I changed it so that it no longer auto updates. Hopefully this will actually solve the problem and I just won't ever update Google Maps.

now I have to redownload all my apps and about 1100 Songs, errrrrr..... but if I can have my old navigation back I guess is worth it

Wow, that was a really drastic step. For future reference, all you had to do was tap "Uninstall" in Google Maps in the Play Store. That would uninstall all updates to the app, leaving it in its original state.

The trouble with reverting to factory default is that you get the version of Maps that was the most recent one when the tablet was made, including whatever bugs and less-capable features were current at the time. If you download the latest pre-redesign version, you can install it using the Files app. Check the box next toSystem settings / Security & Screen Lock / Unknown sources, then find the downloaded file and long-tap it to install it.

I've also found that there is no TRAFFIC in the live navigation anymore one has to move back to the route overview to get it to work? Why would they do that?

I thought I saw traffic displayed in the navigation view. Can't see it now because I'm at home on a country road, but I think I remember it showing up when Google has traffic information.

I just discovered how to toggle between time-to-destination and arrival-time: just tap whichever one is displayed and it'll switch. I'd give that a thumbs-down for discoverability but thumbs-up for usability once you find it. The way this worked in the old version was another weakness: it showed time-to-destination in the navigation view and arrival-time in the route view.

[Edit] Playing with the app here in my home office, I can see it has some nice features. It just doesn't look ready for release.

Not sure what you are referring to. There is still a separate icon for Navigation. You don't have to access it through the Maps icon. Just click Navigation in your Android app list.

As for the crashing, try this. Go into your phone settings, then your Application Manager. Find Maps, then click Clear Cache, Clear Settings, Stop App, then Uninstall Updates. Now go back and reinstall the update again from the Google Play Store and see if that fixes the crashes.

That isn't accurate. The older version took traffic into account at the time of initial route calculation only. Once a route was selected and you were navigating it then took traffic into account to adjust your ETA. It did NOT however, reconsider whether there were better routes due to traffic.

This new version does that. All traffic and your selected route is analyzed in real time as you drive. That is completely new.

It shows up in navigation view based on the zoom level. You can also manually see traffic in navigation mode by simply touch-zooming into the map. You'll get a resume button on the bottom left to take you back to automatic map mode. You don't have to go into the route overview to see traffic details. That just shows you traffic on the overall route.

I didn't know that. Thanks.

Have you updated to 4.3? When you do, the navigation button/app is gone. I am now back on 4.2 and have it again.

That means you haven't yet been upgraded to the redesigned Google Maps.

Not true. I've used it on about 1100 miles of travel so far. I know exactly what version I have.

I misspoke above however, when claiming the Navigation app was still in the app listing. It isn't. However, if you already had a Navigation shortcut on your Android Home screens before the Maps update, on most versions of Android the Google Maps update did not remove those existing shortcuts. It did remove the separate listing for Navigation view from the app listing though. I was wrong about that. I didn't notice that because I still had the shortcut on my Home screens.

That being said, I don't use the Navigation shortcut anymore after the new update. As I see it, everything that can be done from the Navigation shortcut can be done from the main Maps screen, with the added benefit of having your Starred Favorites and Recent Searches available in a single click from the main Map screen while they are no where to be accessed if using the Navigation shortcut.

This was the first time I have uninstalled Google app and now using the original version that came with the phone. I absolutely hated the "upgrade". Seems that Google is becoming as arrogant as Microsoft and Apple with its products,

I'm curious what people don't like about the update. I love it personally. I have had a few crashes myself. The traffic rerouting works well in my opinion. The accuracy of the ETA's in Chicago and New Orleans have been amazing so far. I'm not seeing the reason for the negative reaction to this update.

People tend to hate changes in software, having invested a chunk of time in learning the previous version. That's the only reason I can see for, e.g., preferring Windows XP over Windows 7. However, there are some specific feature losses in the new Google Maps, including

1. No support for My Maps
2. No separate Navigate button
3. No Zoom buttons
4. No Latitude support (whatever that is)

I saw some real panic over item 1 online right after the upgrade dropped, as people who had set up events based on shared maps didn't know how to address the problem. (There are some options but they're workarounds.)

I don't miss the separate Navigate button, which always seemed weird to me: isn't navigating one of the things you do with a map? I do use two Navigate shortcuts that the old version allowed me to save to a desktop folder but they're not very important to me.

The loss of the Zoom buttons is trivial once you discover the finger gesture that replaces them. The problem there is that it isn't discoverable; you have to find it by accident or by reading the instructions. I'm a software developer and I learned long ago that few users, myself included, actually read the instructions.

I might miss Latitude if I knew what it was.

They've improved some of the map's features; for example, they've replaced the clumsy old menu-driven alternate route selector with a metaphor similar to that on the Google Maps web site, with alternates shown in grey and selectable with a tap.

Overall, I advise everyone to try living with the new Maps for a while before giving up on it. After two weeks, try to remember what you liked about the old version. My guess is that 95% of users won't be able to and will find they're perfectly happy with the new version.

The biggest problem for me is that new Google Maps quits displaying stars for starred items/"My Places" for no apparent reason, and I have to kill the app completely in order to make it reload and display stars again. It's incredibly annoying since my usual trip habit is to star everything in advance, then identify geographic clusters and operate on the fly within the clusters -- it makes picking my next stop a five-step process rather than one.

My nav app was in the top corner of my screen. I hit the blue app, hit speak destination and off it went.

I could do the entire thing while driving without even looking at the tablet.
New map? No way.....

I agree on that list. #1 is a loss. #2 and #3 are complaints without merit in my opinion. No need to zoom by buttons when a gesture does it now. Still only needs one hand / one finger. #4 was a loss, but I replaced the functionality with a different app that turns out to be much better.

Latitude is a "finder" app. i.e., Did my kid make it to school? Is he at the mall like he said he would be? How far away is my wife from meeting me for dinner? etc. My family used it. Found Life360 and it is 100% better.

You may not be aware of how to interact with the new Google Maps v7 app. I hope you find the information below helpful. The "workflow" in the new app is actually less screen clicks than before when you use Google Now to start your navigation session. You need to be interacting with Google Now, not Google Maps. That is the reason or your frustration.

1) Activate Google Now (same screen press as hitting old Navigation icon)
2) Say "Navigate to....in (or near)......" (Exactly the same as before)
3) Look at the screen. If it got your destination right, watch the "timer line" scroll across the screen. (Better than old version which only gave you a text list of the search result, not a map too).
4) Do nothing if it got it right. The "timer line" will finish and a navigation session will automatically start using the best route.

With the new version, if voice recognition successfully returned your desired destination, you have the original single screen click that was necessary to start Google Now and then have nothing more required of you to start a navigation session. That is an improvement over the old version, not a detriment. This also works for your Home and Work destination definitions. Tell Google Now "Navigation Home" and you're done.

You need to start your navigation session from the Maps app instead of Google Now, ONLY if you want to see the 3 route choices, want to browse/zoom the map or for some reason want to review the search results in more detail than they are presented in Google Now.

Google Now is your "one-click" interface to Google Maps Navigation now. The need for a separate Google Navigation icon is obsolete.

I completely agree that Google hasn't been detailed enough about the functionality of some of the products they release, including Google Maps 7 and how it works with Google Now. But the functionality is there and it is a big improvement over the previous version. You just have to play with it for awhile.

Within Google Now you can also use the "Show me a map of....in (or near)...." functionality and then start a navigation session from those results as well. That method however, requires more screen clicks, both in Google Now and in Google Maps before navigation is started.

I hope this helps you. Once you learn how to interact with this app through Google Now, I think your opinion of it will change.

Funny behavior of starred favorites does seem to be an issue right now. But, this only appears to be an issue visually on the map. The content of your starred favorites is still there. From the Maps app's main screen, click the "person" icon in the top right. Under "Saved Places" click on "View All" and you should see all of them, irrespective of whether they are rendering properly on the map.

I have never even tried Google now. I will play with it a bit and hopefully it will be everything I need, thanks for the help.

Recently had iPad Chrome update forced on me. Multiple bugs of which only few have been fixed. They seem to be pushing out betas.

Google Now is amazing technology. Amazing. It is my main interaction with my phone: navigation, text messaging, calling contacts, starting Internet searches, looking up business phone numbers, etc.

For travelers, if you put a quality formatted destination in the LOCATION or WHERE field of your calendar app, then Google Now will read your calendar and pre-populate itself with a calculated route to that destination, complete with an overview map and the time needed to get there from wherever you are right now (including real time traffic delays). One click on the Navigate icon and it starts navigating.

PLUS, Google Now can notify you before each calendar appointment and tell you what time you need to leave your current location in order to arrive at your future destination at the time that is in your calendar.

The location field in your calendar can take several forms:

1) Place Name, City, State
2) Street Address, City, State
3) Place Name, Street Address, City, State

For #1 it has to be specific. You can't say "New Orleans Airport, New Orleans, LA." It will take you to a small private airport near the lake. You have to say "Louis Armstrong Airport, Kenner, LA."

If you use Gmail, it will read your flight confirmation emails and populate itself with updated flight status information before your flight. It will also show you weather at your destination automatically.

It is an indispensable app for people who travel and have a lot of appointments that they drive to.

I just turned off Google Now after another trial of a week or so. My Droid Razr just doesn't seem to have the horsepower to support it.

Very well stated. I hope the pendulum swings back toward discoverability soon.

Why on earth would they remove the scale & measure feature? Its a map, I'd like to be able to judge distances, and looking at a new city, this can be difficult without a scale.

Inability to store multiple off-line maps for when I travel. I use google maps on my nexus 7 off-line, storing all the cities I visit when I travel (4 european countries in 6 days is my schedule in 3 weeks time). By the looks of it you can't do this anymore and can only store 1 off-line map.
Found osmand (free) app, it works great. Maps galore!

Amen to that :(

As I said here, you can still store maps offline. The new version of this feature is a significant step backwards from the old one, though, as there's currently no way to view or manage your cached maps.

Here's how:

1. Adjust the map until the displayed area encompasses the area you want stored off line.
2. Tap "Search".
3. Scroll down in the card that pops up below the Search bar.
4. Tap the "Make this map area available offline" link.

I've just put my phone in Airplane mode and confirmed that the Paris, London, and Cambridge areas I'd cached were still available.

The card in step 3 is called the Explorer. Sometimes it's labeled "Explore" and sometimes it isn't; I haven't detected what drives this behavior. The Explore card lists nearby starred favorites (with a "display all" option) at the top, then some common search option icons (knife and fork, coffee cup, martini glass, and gas pump on my phone in portrait mode) followed by an ellipsis button. Tapping the ellipsis opens a "Nearby places" list, in which I've just discovered that retail motor fuel outlets are labeled "gas stations" in the US, "petrol stations" in the UK, and "stations-service" (with "gas stations" in a smaller font below) in France.

The search bar has to be empty in order to bring up the Explore card. You can clear it by tapping the gray X. If you locate a place, then clear the search bar, then tap the search bar, the Explore card for the last place you searched for opens.

I hope Google moves very quickly to improve the new Maps' usability. It has a lot of significant improvements, but no-one will learn to use them if they can't find them.

On another note, it's a commonplace observation that nothing helps you learn something better than explaining it. Thanks, FT and its members in this discussion, for giving me a little impetus to learn how this new Maps app works!

Similar feelings here. The navigation is extremely buggy. I select a destination and start navigation but then instead of showing the turn-by-turn directions (the GPS screen) it goes back to select destitation screen. I choose again, only to find out that the GPS screen is already working in the background. Then it crashes.

Then it keeps crashing again and again. Extremely frustrating.

Thanks so much AJ, I didnt know you could turn off Google Now, it slowed my phone too!

Right, except both Saved Places (top-three) and the View All drill-down only give them to me in order of most recently starred (it's not even a default preference I can change!), which is damn near useless in the mobile context unless you only make plans day-to-day. I identify points of interest months or sometimes even years out. If I'm in Atlanta and trying to remember the name of that restaurant my friend suggested a few months back that I'm pretty sure was within 2 or 3 MARTA stops of Bobby Dodd Stadium, scrolling past 30-40 places in Vancouver, Raleigh and Blacksburg I've marked since I talked to him is inconvenient at best.

If I bought the new Nexus 7, which comes with Android 4.3, I would get the new Google Maps.

But can I uninstall it and install the older version? One of the reasons I don't like the iOS Google Maps is that I can't load My Maps on them and I have dozens of them, saved from planning trips over the years.

I don't know whether you can uninstall whatever version of Google Maps comes pre-installed. Google does say they're going to add My Maps to the new version; time will tell.

If you can uninstall, you can download the last pre-redesign version of Google Maps for Android from various places. Google Maps_6.14.3.apk, then install it from your files manager.

There are two different options for looking at Starred Favorites. You need to use the first one. When you hit the little person icon you have HOME and WORK and then you have both NEARBY SAVED PLACES and SAVED PLACES in two separate lists. The nearby saved places list is sorted by distance from your current location. In fact when I was in Chicago last week it only showed me 3 saved places because the 4th one was near my home - about 350 miles away. It didn't even bother to show me them in the Nearby Saved Places list. Saved Places is sorted by the order you added them.

Bizarre -- I could swear I've never seen this option before, but it was there when I clicked on it just now. I know I got a Maps update last night or this morning -- maybe it just came through.

Thanks for the pointer! I'd still prefer the stars display consistently, but at least this is a start.