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Android Auto bug causes your car to vanish from Google Maps

A weird bug on Android Auto is causing your car to vanish from Google Maps, but needed functionality is still in place.

Over the past several days, a growing number of Android Auto users have noticed a bug where their car’s icon in Google Maps disappears from view. There’s no car icon, no blue arrow for location, nothing. Just the map itself.

Those affected say that features such as navigation and traffic data still show as usual, including moving the map to match the car’s location, but the lack of an icon is a little weird.

One user on Reddit shared a picture of the bug, showing no indication of where the car is on the map. It does seem that this is happening mainly to users with a non-default icon for their car enabled on Google Maps, but users with the default setting applied report the problem too. It seems to happen mainly when Maps is temporarily off-screen, such as when you enter the car’s normal infotainment system or open a media app on Android Auto.

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This one seems like a pretty obvious glitch, and one that Google will likely fix. The exact cause is unknown, but the timing lines up with the Android Auto 16.1 rollout, which started late last week in the stable track.

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

Find him on Twitter @NexusBen. Send tips to schoon@9to5g.com or encrypted to benschoon@protonmail.com.