Google Maps Offline Navigation Support Is Finally Here: Announces Google

[mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ff3b3e” txt_color=”#ffffff”]G[/mks_dropcap]oogle has finally announced the availability of Google Maps offline navigation. Now Google Maps users will be able to download a portion of maps which can be used to navigate even when there’s no connectivity. Until now, Google maps used to provide a few basic capabilities for offline navigation like viewing an area of map while offline. From now on, user can get turn-by-turn driving directions, search for specific destinations, and find useful information about places like hours of operation, contact information or ratings.

“Roughly 60 percent of the world is without Internet today, and even where online access is available, it can still be spotty. That means that quick and easy access to information is still not possible for a majority of the population” – Said Amanda Bishop, Product Manager at Google said in a blog post.

Google Maps is taking steps to help people across the globe find directions and get where they’re going, even when they don’t have an Internet connection.

How to use Google Maps Offline Navigation?

To download an area, you can search for a city, county or country, and download the map for searched portion by tapping ‘Download’ on the resulting page. You can also go to ‘Offline Areas’ in the Google Maps menu and tap on the ‘+’ button to download maps for offline use. Once an offline map is downloaded, Google Maps will move into offline mode automatically when it will recognize an unstable Internet connectivity, or no Internet connectivity at all. To make sure you can access full and current version of Maps with live traffic, it will automatically switch back to online when a connection is found. To save you from huge data charges, maps will be downloaded only when you’re on a Wi-Fi connection.

Google promises that while users won’t see the difference between online and offline in the front, but it will be working hard in the back-end. Maps app will favour online mode to make sure uses get the most up to date information, but will continue navigating seamlessly in offline mode if connection is lost.

[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#f2f2f2″ txt_color=”#FF3B3E”]We’re rolling out the first set of these improvements with the latest version of Google Maps.[/mks_pullquote]

The availability of Google Maps offline navigation support is a big news for thousands of users who have to struggle with slow and unstable internet connection. Now users can simply choose to download a portion of map when they have Internet connectivity and they can get full functionality of Maps even when they are offline.

Starting from today, the latest version of Google Maps will be capable of offline navigation support on Android. iOS version will be updated soon to include offline navigation function.

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Source: Google Blog