Along with snacks, good tunes and cries of “are we there yet?” spotty connectivity is often a feature on road trips. From today, it will be easier to prepare for those long stretches of wifi-free road while still saving on device storage and data, with the launch of SD card support and “Wi-Fi only” mode for Google Maps on Android.
Now, in addition to saving an area of the maps for offline use later, if you have a device that supports SD cards, you can opt to save your downloaded maps to an external SD card (if your device supports them) and free up storage space for important stuff like your holiday snaps or road trip playlists. Now you’ll never have to choose between snapping more food photos or the ability to navigate offline.
You can also choose to save on mobile data by taking Google Maps completely offline. Once you’ve switched to “Wi-fi only”, the Google Maps app will work completely offline — no Wi-Fi needed! You will still be able to use other apps and the rest of your phone as you normally would. And you might even save on battery life too. If you need to see what the traffic is like or update your offline maps, you can easily switch back to online mode by changing your setting or finding the nearest Wi-Fi.
Posted by Sanket Gupta, Product Manager
