Not everyone can be a human GPS system, but in this day and age most people don’t need to as they have helpful tools like Google Maps to help them along. For all the features Maps gives to users and for all its usefulness, it isn’t exempt from flaws and glitches as generally no software is. A bug that people seemed to be recently experiencing has to do with the directions portion of Maps when users prompt the Google Search app look for directions. While this isn’t entirely a deal breaker from users, it might be a little bit inconvenient considering how useful and easy the Search app is to find places nearby which you want or need directions to.
When you need to look for directions or get navigation to a specific place, if you open Maps immediately and search from within Maps from the start, you should be OK as the problem doesn’t seem to populate when you seek directions through this method. If you’re like tons of Android users out there though you more than likely open up Search first as it’s much easier to do the searching from there instead of Maps. It seems to be happening when users open up Search, type up a place they’re looking for that’s nearby and then tap to receive directions to that place. What will likely end up happening is you’ll simply be shown the last place you searched for within Maps or your last known location in the Maps app, instead of a series of directions to the location you requested.
While this may not be happening to all users, we got the same results on multiple devices so it’s not an isolated bug to just a small group. The good news is that directions work just fine when you try to grab them straight from Maps, so at the most you’ll just have to bypass Search when in need of directions for the time being. At the moment there is no word on timing for a fix of this issue, but seeing as how it’s rather minor and isn’t causing either app to break, Google may very well end up fixing it in an update without mentioning it.
