TL;DR
- Google Maps may be considering a change to its interface for adding stops to a route.
- Instead of seeing options on the map, you could choose them from a list, and also filter those results.
- The new filters also appear to be in the works for Maps on Android Auto.
Plans change, but when they do, Google Maps is ready to roll with the punches. Even if we’re already in the middle of a journey, Maps makes it easy to search for new destinations along our route, and add them as new stops in just a couple taps. While that works great, Google has never been one to leave well enough alone, and we’ve spotted the company’s developers working on what looks like a new approach to how we add destinations like that.
Today we’re looking at version 25.42.02.817770306 of Google Maps for Android, and while you’ll see the regular old add-a-stop UI when running this release yourself, we’ve been able to trigger the appearance of a work-in-progress revision to this interface. Let’s start be reacquainting ourselves with how the system works now:
In Maps as we know it, after you initiate a search during navigation, you’ll see nearby destinations pop up on your map. Then when you tap on one of those, you’ll have the opportunity to confirm it as a stop you want to add.
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With this new release, Google’s also been building something that works slightly differently:
Instead of showing search results right on the map, here we instead get them in a screen-bottom card. Pulling that up displays details on those options — and notably adds a “Call” button to results. While it still shows how big of a detour these stops would be, though, the lack of being able to see exactly where they are in relation to us (and our planned route) does feel like a bit of a downgrade.
On the plus side, this screen adds some handy filtering options, letting us prioritize locations near our current location, midway along the trip, or closer to the end — pretty handy when planning ahead.
Even better, it looks like Google’s also working to bring those same kind of filters to navigation in Android Auto. There we already have that “Open now” filter when searching for stuff like nearby restaurants, but Google appears to be thinking about replacing that with a more general button for filters.
Tap on that, and you’ll find the new home for “Open now” as well as filters for where along your route you’d like to search — this time, depicted visually with some smart iconography.
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
And as you select one of those and look through your results, you’ll see that same icon up top reminding you of your filter settings.
All told, we’re feeling kind of a mixed bag towards this — the filters are great, but so was being able to see the stops we were adding right on our maps.
The good news is that Google has yet to push any of these changes live, so there’s clearly still time for developers to tweak their approach here — not all the buttons are even working yet. So maybe we might just get a best-of-both-worlds outcome in the end; here’s hoping, anyway!
⚠️ 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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