Google Maps misbehaving on Android phone

In My Humble Opinion
1

Lately, when I use Google Maps on my Android phone to take me from point A to point B, by the time I get to the end of the trip, the bottom part of the screen is unresponsive, so I can’t close the trip instructions and just go back to the basic Maps screen. I can get the virtual button to go back the Home screen, but I can’t use Maps for anything else until I go into Apps/Maps and Force Stop the application. This happens at least half the time, maybe more. This is the only app I have ever had anything like this kind of problem with, so I don’t think it’s the phone or the OS per se.

I can’t uninstall Maps and re-install it. All I could do was uninstall all the updates, which I discovered today and did. I don’t know yet if this will be effective.

So, either of two things would be welcome here: advice on how to make the app behave better, or suggestions for another map app that is as much like Google Maps as possible but without this flaw (I have tried Waze, didn’t like it).

2

I assume you’ve tried rebooting the phone?

3

Ooh, ooh, I know this one! This happened to me last week for 3 days while traveling! I had somehow enabled “Driving Mode” on my phone, which won’t let you access the mapping controls. Go into your Map settings and disable Driving Mode. You might have to Google how to do it, as I’ve already forgotten the exact steps.

4

Click your profile picture in the app, choose settings, look at the menu choices (sorry, I don’t have my phone right here). There’s a toggle to turn off driving mode.

5

The theory being, I guess, that if you’re at the wheel, you have no business frotzing with the map controls on a tiny screen heads-down in the cabin.

I agree in principle, but I’m glad it’s configurable, because clearly there are ways to set things up where it’s less of an issue.

6

Trouble is, once I arrived at the destination, I still couldn’t access the controls. I couldn’t enter in a new location. I couldn’t even close the app without going through what Roderick Femm did in the OP.

7

Not surprising, Waze is built on top of Google Maps.

8

Yes, that was the first thing I tried to restart Maps, until I figured out I could Force Stop the app instead, which was quicker and easier. Suffice to say, I have restarted the phone several times since this problem started appearing.

Thank you to @needscoffee and @susan, I found the control (I still had to look it up on a video, it is buried two layers under Navigation Settings. So I have changed this, but I wonder whether, if that setting was wrong, why I only have been having this problem some of the time. Anyway, I will try it and see how it goes.

9

Let us know if it seems to work!

10

Specifically, click on your picture in the upper right, then
Settings
Navigation settings
Google Assistant settings
Driving Mode >> switch to off.

Unfortunately, that also stops Google from reading out your texts while you’re driving.

I’m not sure I prefer that to just killing Maps when I get to my location. I find that swiping the app up is sufficient to undo the locked mode it goes into at the end of the trip.

11

Fortunately, that’s something I don’t do. Most of the texts I get these days are “political” spam.

The suggested fix from @needscoffee and @susan seems to have worked. In the course of the morning I used the trip feature of maps maybe 6 times, and had no problem at any of those times. One or two other recent behaviors that were too minor to mention also changed back to what I had been used to before. So, I am happy, and thanks to everyone.

12

Have you tried clearing caches?

And/or Organic Maps…?