Google Driving Mode changed for me today
I’d pretty much gotten used to the driving mode as it stood – a small live preview of where I am and 3-4 suggestions for where it thought I might want to go, but today it threw me a curve ball.
Yesterday was my normal white map with a couple of features, today I was presented with the program on the right. One thing I noticed during an excessively long commute today was that the “tell me the news” feature seemed to work without the usual problems of it dropping the stream and forgetting it was playing something.
I had one item that took about a minute to time out on and then it chugged along. First time in a long time I’ve not had to ask it to tell me the news again and gotten the reply “picking up where you left off.”
I do sort of miss the overhead driving mode. I can kick it into navigation but not seeing a way to just free look around the area which I use quite a bit when I’m planning on breaking into houses in strange neighborhoods. Got to know your exit routes. Kidding. I use it to know what streets are coming up when I’ve got a general idea of the area but don’t really want to navigate to a particular address.
My guess is the app is dark due to me having set dark mode many many moons ago and the app getting updated to actually honor that. But could be wrong. Might just be that way to attempt to preserve battery life and lower phone heat.
Anyone else use driving mode (launched by saying “hey google, driving mode”) and seeing this? thoughts?
