Google Maps

Besides partnering with NBC and Team USA, Google is celebrating the Paris 2024 Olympics across its major services.

Google has announced a few new features for Maps that are specific to India, including support for incident reports on Android Auto, something we’ve been asking about for years.

After adding public transit directions earlier this year, Google Maps for Wear OS now has a redesigned Tile and two new complications.

Google Maps, like Waze, supports user-based reports of incidents such as crashes, road conditions, and police speed traps, and support for that functionality is finally showing up on CarPlay.

Live Activities are a really cool, but underused feature of iOS. Google Maps first announced that the app would support Live Activities back in 2023, but it’s still not arrived. However, after some tests went live earlier this year, we’re seeing more users reporting the feature is live.

Over the course of 2024, Google Maps for Android has been working on a redesign that drops most fullscreen UIs in favor of sheet-based layouts. This revamp is now more widely rolling out.

Google Maps is a widely used tool for getting around, but one user spotted what was thought to be a new ad format where ads pop up during navigation to recommend a “quick detour” – thankfully that’s not the case.

Back in December, Google announced that Maps Location History would soon be stored on your phone instead of the cloud. This change to the Google Maps Timeline is continuing to roll out, and will see the deprecation of Your Timeline on the web.

For the past several years, Google Search and Maps has offered a Business Messages capability that lets customers reach out to stores, restaurants, etc. via text chat. This is now shutting down in July.

The new Google Maps bottom bar, which we spotted at I/O yesterday, is starting to roll out on Android.

Back in March, Google’s announcement about the latest Maps travel features included a mention of how the app is getting a “cleaner home screen.” At I/O 2024, we get a glimpse at the new Google Maps bottom bar.

Google Maps is picking up a couple of useful new tricks, at least on Android, that make it easier to find EV charging stations as well as seeing the entirety of a road.

Back in February, Google Maps started testing a big redesign of the Android app. On my devices/account it was pulled after a few weeks, but it’s now rolling back out with some noticeable refinements.

Following the big update that added public transit directions last month, Google Maps has tweaked its Wear OS Tile to provide quick access to the map.

Live Activities are a super useful feature of Apple’s latest iPhones, but also one that goes underused. Google Maps has been overdue to support the feature for years now and while it’s still not live yet, Google is testing Live Activities with some iPhone users.