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Death of personal GPS navigation devices? Offline navigation with Google Maps is now available!

By Cookie Monster - on 16 Nov 2015, 2:45pm

Death of personal GPS navigation devices? Offline navigation with Google Maps is now available!

 Image source: Google

Google demonstrated offline navigation for Google Maps six months ago at I/O 2015 and the feature is finally ready for consumers.

Offline navigation on Google Maps allows you to download a particular area in a city or country by selecting "Download" on the resulting place sheet, or by going to "Offline Areas" in the Google Maps menu and tapping on the "+" option.

To prevent large data consumption and charges from downloading maps for offline use, Google has made it default to download over a Wi-Fi connection. When you are in a location with no connectivity, Google Maps will automatically enable offline navigation. Previously, the "offline mode" shows you the location on the map and cannot provide directions to a particular point of interest. 

Starting today, Google will be "gradually rolling out the first set of these improvements with the latest version of Google Maps" for Android with more offline features available over time. It will be "coming soon to iOS".

Source: Google via ArsTechnica

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