Google’s just made it even easier to leave your phone at home, so long as you take your smartwatch with you. How? By adding offline maps support to Google Maps on Wear OS. That way, so long as you planned ahead, you can find your way around regardless of whether your watch has an internet connection or not.
According to Google’s announcement blog post, this feature works in more or less the same way as offline Google Maps on your phone or tablet. You download those maps on the Google Maps app as you normally would, and they’ll be automatically synced to your smartwatch in the “Offline Maps” section of the Google Maps watch app.
It also looks as though you’ll automatically get a map of your home area as well. While I’d assume most people know their local area pretty well, that could prove useful if you ran out without your phone and you need some help to get home quickly.
This effectively means that if you venture into an area without an active cellular signal, or have a Bluetooth-only smartwatch, you can still use Google Maps to find your way around. Of course, like offline navigation on phones, this means you’ll miss out on any features that are reliant on an active data connection.
So real-time traffic levels, road closures, voice commands, public transit information and so on will all be off limits until you reconnect to the internet.
Google hasn’t said which Wear OS watches will get this update, though TechRadar points out that the Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Watch 3 and Galaxy Watch 4 have already started receiving the update. Presumably more of the best smartwatches for Android will be next in line, so long as they’re still eligible for regular Wear OS software updates.
Just be sure to keep checking your watch to see if the Offline Maps option has appeared in the Google Maps app on Wear OS. That way you can head out into the world without having to worry about whether you have enough pocket or bag space for it.
