What happened to Google maps?

June 14, 2018 10:46 AM

Google maps stopped saying, "In 600 feet, turn right on Main Street" and instead says "In 600 feet, turn right". Is there any way to get my street names back? Or is there any competitor to Google maps for Android that includes street names in it's audible directions?
posted by latkes to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: Did you switch the language in Google Maps? Settings > Navigation Settings > Voice Selection. Some of the languages don't have the ability to speak street names. If you're in the US, you should set it to "Default (English)," as the "English (US)" setting does not offer this capability, I don't believe.

Also, street name speaking may require network access, so if you don't have network at the time, you may not get the spoken name.
posted by kindall at 11:02 AM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Yes!! Solved. Not sure how I changed it. In retrospect I did change to kilometers and back somewhere in there so maybe I changed the language without knowing I had.
posted by latkes at 11:07 AM on June 14, 2018

For others who might find this question:

For me, the issue was that I had a VPN app turned on, where the location was set to a location in Europe rather than in the US (which is where I was). Google Maps did not know how to deal with that, and defaulted to giving me directions without street names. It drove me crazy until I figured it out.
posted by gemmy at 1:24 PM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Another alternate explanation since I had this happen just yesterday: my phone had lost its internet connection—still trying to hang on to my Wi-Fi even though I was out of range—and didn't say any street names until it gave up and fell back to LTE. I guess maybe the app gets help from Google's servers for pronunciation.
posted by Ryon at 3:08 PM on June 14, 2018