With all of the buzz surrounding Google’s latest product offerings that were announced just yesterday morning, including the all-new Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X as well as the new Chromecast, Chromecast Audio, and the Pixel C tablet, it could have been easy to miss an updated version of Google Maps which appears to have started heading out to users as of sometime yesterday evening. Google typically updates their apps on Wednesdays, although it isn’t uncommon for them push updates to apps early. There is at least one minor change to note here, but nothing major or drastic like a new UI or tons of new features.
While most people are likely still waiting on the addition of the capability to use navigation offline, and rightfully so as that will be a huge improvement in Maps, (something which HERE maps already offers by way of letting users download entire maps for use with navigating directions) this update does not include that functionality so Google likely has that feature planned for a bigger update. What is included is the ability to now disable notifications for traffic alerts. For example, if you’re listening to navigation on a drive to work and you’re constantly getting alerts about traffic updates, you’ll now have the ability to turn these alerts off. It may not be something that gets used often by many people as the notifications can be very useful for keeping on top of traffic changes which can help you stay out of bad traffic and slow-downs, among other things like accidents, it’s still nice to have the option and some users will likely be glad to see it included.
The option to disable traffic notifications is under settings in the notifications menu under the option to toggle on or off the “questions about places” function. These can be turned on or off at any time so users shouldn’t feel worried about not being able to access them again if they get rid of them, save for the fact that they’ll need to remember to turn them back on whenever they want to use them which shouldn’t be too much of an issue. The update should be available in the Play Store for everyone, but if it isn’t showing up you can grab the apk file here to install it.