Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Maps v26.04.01 includes code for a new feature that will let users delete all their contributed incident reports.
- The option will likely be under Settings > Location & Privacy, and accessing it will remove the association between your submitted reports and your account.
- Additionally, the “Contribute” tab could also receive a UI update that harmonizes colors and hides the bio input box for existing profiles.
Part of what makes Google Maps such an excellent tool for travel and commuting is the abundance of crowd-sourced data. Features like incident reports help add a layer of real-time, community-based input to the navigation service. However, users have little control over the incident reports they’ve submitted, as there is no option to delete them later. Incident reports “fade” over time as other users confirm or deny them, but, generally speaking, there’s no way to delete submitted reports. That could soon change, as Google Maps v26.04.01 includes code suggesting Google could soon let users delete all their contributed reports across incidents, road conditions, transit, and trip issues.
The option to delete all incident reports will be available in Google Maps under Settings > Location & Privacy.
Once you select the option, all live contributions from you will no longer be associated with your account and will be deleted when they expire.
While the ability to delete reports will certainly be appreciated, there’s currently no option to delete only select reports. It would be nice to have the ability to delete incident reports from the past hour, for example, to account for any accidental reports made from your profile.
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Google is also tweaking the profile header in the Contribute tab. The newer header harmonizes the color scheme, though some might feel that it now looks a little too bland.
In the second set of screenshots above, you can see that the Bio input box will be removed in the upcoming UI. The input box will only appear when you haven’t added a bio yet. Users can still add a bio by tapping on the Edit profile option.
These changes are not yet live in Google Maps. We’ll keep you updated when they roll out.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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