Google Maps will no longer store review drafts (not that anyone knew it could)

Ben Schoon | Apr 17 2024 - 7:34 am PT

Google Maps reviews are a valuable resource, but the service is losing the ability to store drafts of a review in progress.

Writing a review on Google Maps is often a very quick process, but some users leave longer, more in-depth reviews of locations. This is especially common among Local Guides. As such, it’d be handy to save an unfinished draft you’re working on.

Google Maps technically, apparently, supports this, but it’s not straightforward.

The current workflow when leaving a review on Google Maps requires that the whole process is completed at once. This applies to both the web and the mobile apps. Trying to leave an unfinished review will ask if you’d like to “discard” the review, and tapping “no” just leaves the review open. There’s no way to save your progress.

In the past, though, review drafts in Google Maps were supported, with drafts being automatically saved.

As of July 16, Google says that all existing Maps review drafts will be deleted, with the functionality officially being discontinued. Google announced the change in an email to users.

Review drafts will no longer be supported. Starting July 16th, existing drafts will be removed and you will be unable to save new drafts on Google Maps.

For anyone who actually does have review drafts on their accounts (there’s actually no way to see if this is the case), Google says to either publish the review or extract a copy of it via Google Takeout using the “Maps (your places)” download option.

Did you ever use Google Maps review drafts?