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Download offline maps in the Google Maps app without signing in

74 points by orangepurple ↗ HN
Pick a city completely at random. Click on the city name. Pull up the card to consume the full screen. Only then will three dots will show up in top right. In that menu you can download offline map without signing in. To manage your offline maps download a second region at random. While downloading you will notice the download in your Android notification drawer. Click on the download and cancel it. You can manage your other downloaded regions from here. There is no other way to access this menu unless you are signed in. However, with my method you don't need to sign in to the maps app ever. Thank you to whoever built the app without explicitly requiring Google Play services as well. I owe you a drink.

28 comments

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mikece
Very cool! However, I would like something similar without Google or Apple or Microsoft ever knowing what I downloaded. Is there a privacy-respecting mapping app that supports ahead-of-time downloading of map data that actually works well?
therealmarv
OSMand https://osmand.net/

Organic Maps https://organicmaps.app/

are your best bet.

orangepurple
OSMand is what I use 95% of the time for offline navigation. I first discovered this when I realized you couldn't use Google Maps for navigation in Serbia in 2015. The other 5% of the time I use Google Maps or Waze directly or manually enter its route suggestions as navigation waypoints into OSMand.
maven29
Here maps is run by a consortium of european car manufacturers. They let you download entire countries even.

IIRC they have their roots in navteq, which was acquired by nokia in their heyday. They have really good level of detail in my corner of the world in the middle-east, FWIW.

cptskippy
I feel like if this gains visibility the Google Project Manager will catch wind and will quickly correct both of these regressions.
orangepurple
I know I am contemplating deleting this post. This method is saving my behind traveling in foreign countries without a data SIM and I wanted to help others in a similar situation. Maybe HN mods can blacklist IPs from Google for this post (lol).
cptskippy
I really miss the Android Marshmallow era version of Google Maps before the Material Design conquest. It was such a useful map for navigation. We used it with offline maps on a tablet to travel all over Scotland.

When they redesigned it really hit home that you were the product and not the consumer of Google Maps. They removed all the useful metadata about routes like the elevation timeline. Configurable POIs were replaced with highest bidder adverts. I had to submit feedback for half a year complaining before they finally added back the Scale, and even then it was an off by default setting.

At least for me, Google Maps is only useful if I know my destination and it's no longer a meaningful discovery tool for what's around me.

justsomehnguy
Sometimes a hack should be exposed so a better alternatives could emerge. Sometimes they do. Most of the time the hack stops working.

Circle of hacks, I suppose.

pbueckle
Pro tip to make it even easier: just type "ok maps" into the search bar of Google Maps, crop to fit the view and press download :)
PopAlongKid
When I do this, it just pulls up a map of Oklahoma, no way to download.
teekert
I bet Google sees this as a bug, and this as a report ;)
behnamoh
this is one reason I don't reveal such tricks online. if only GOOG engineers would play cool and let us enjoy nice things.

PS: Same thing with YouTube and tricks that bring back the dislike count. Don't reveal them...

fritigern
I recommend OSMAnd: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/

Or Organic Maps: https://organicmaps.app/

Vladimof
The problem with OSMAnd is the search feature is really bad and they are missing most addresses in many states (like Georgia)... I still use it instead of Google Maps but I often have to convert addresses to Lon-Lat using a 3rd party web service.
fritigern
I agree, search in OSMAnd is really bad. Organic Maps is a significant improvement in local search, but it doesn't have all the features that OSMAnd has. I use OSMAnd for mapping and Organic Maps for navigation and a Google Maps equivalent (in Germany Google Maps is trash and Organic Maps is much better).
stonewareslord
What do you use to convert them? I've been looking for a way to push a url somewhere and get back the position in osmand

I am currently loading the location in google maps web and picking "Open in App" in the browser, but it doesn't always drop the pin in the right spot

netsharc
When I click a location and Google Maps gets loaded, it also just stays home and doesn't pan to that location...

A few months ago the voice navigation started speaking funny too, mispronouncing words (I noticed it when she said "We found a faster route, which saves x minutes"), but that fixed itself.

orangepurple
The USA is definitely behind in OSMand coverage. Central Western Europe has a lot more detail and street addresses are easy to search for. It's not as useful to search by address in US and Canada but it has been steadily getting better.
fritigern
Here in Germany Google Maps is terrible. OSM coverage is much better.
londons_explore
Googles offline maps have odd pseudo-DRM...

The file is encrypted, and the encryption key is buried in the app. The downloaded files also have expiration dates beyond which the pseudo-drm refuses to show that map data.

I really don't know why they went to such efforts to protect their map data, considering it's easy enough to dump the vector data from the web version as it's sent to the GPU for rendering.

The whole setup smells of being driven by legal rather than technical requirements.

PopAlongKid
You can download offline maps from around the world in Windows Maps app (see Settings) without signing in.