Google Maps has introduced a small but meaningful upgrade to its Android app. The update allows users to make changes to their public profile from inside the app for the first time.
Until now, Google Maps users had to visit the navigation service on a desktop computer to make any changes to their profile. This is the profile that appears whenever you rate a restaurant you’ve visited within Google Maps, or contributing to the latest traffic report for a road you’ve just driven down.
Since you haven’t been able to make any edits to that profile from the device that you’re likely using to navigate out-and-about – your smartphone, it’s likely that your profile picture and information is a little dated on the public-facing part of your account.
To check, launch the Android app, open-up the side menu inside Google Maps and click “Your Profile”.
From here, you’ll be able to make changes to your name, photo, or bio. Not only that, but you’ll get a shortcut to privacy controls.
Google Maps also allows you to hide contributions from your profile – so a particularly scathing review of a bar won’t be sat pride of place beneath your profile picture and bio on your profile. You can also opt-out of sharing your profile with the businesses you follow.
It’s worth pointing out that this change is being pushed from Google’s servers, so you don’t need to worry about checking for an update in the Google Play Store. That’s no guarantee of having the latest feature.
Unfortunately, there’s no mention of when iOS users will be able to use this feature.
That means, for now at least, iPhone and iPad users will have to load-up Google Maps on a desktop computer – or navigate to the desktop site on the Safari web browser – to make some changes to the public profile.
It seems Google is keen to push its users to share more reviews and photos instead of keeping info to yourself. Provided the information is accurate, it should improve the experience and reliability of Google Maps’ data for everyone.
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