Google Maps widely rolling out new color palette

This shit is so much harder to read. I don't understand how this is getting approved. Even driving navigation feels like a torrential horde of vomit with all the high contrast streets sliding by.

Sure, it might make for prettier screenshots, but it's actually functionally harder to read, as the important/highlighted elements just don't stand out as much when literally everything "stands out". I feel like this has been a continued trend from Google Maps and this might be the final straw for me... I've already noticed having a harder time distinguishing turns.

37

I disagree. I find the stronger contrast easier to pick out while driving. I found myself squinting a lot before.

25
- I find that the opposite. There's more contrast on everything. Previously, contrast of the path to follow made if clear where to go. Now that doesn't have as much contrast from the rest so it's harder to glance and see where to go. All of the roads stand out. But I don't care about all of the roads. I care about the ONE road I'm trying to follow and that doesn't stand our from the rest. That's all I'm trying to "pick out" while driving and now that is harder.
  
  It feels like "overly" busy because literally every item on the screen is trying to pop out from the background. That's just noise and over attention grabbing. I don't care about the 7 streets I'm passing popping out and grabbing attention. I barely even need to know they're there, so the low contrast made sense.
  
  2
Hrm, for me it's actually the opposite, although I only see the light mode while driving. But for that in particular, roads and ways are much much easier to make out.

6
- I just strongly disagree with this. In light mode, roads are way more blaring. That makes them easier to see against the background. But makes it harder to see everything else. IE, if I drive to a 5 way intersection, it's extremely difficult to tell which road is highlighted as the path for me to take. Because everything stands out, the actual DIRECTIONS don't stand out from everything else.
  
  I dont care about seeing roads that aren't the ones I'm taking very well. While navigating, all I care about is where I'm going and maybe like counting how many cross roads or intersections till I turn. When I'm searching for things, I don't care about roads, I care about seeing balloons. And as EVERYTHING has more contrast, the results/selections don't stand out as much and it's harder to read.
  
  I do wonder if maybe this becomes a rural vs city sort of thing. Maybe that's not a big problem with rural driving and fewer roads? But harder when there's a bunch of roads in one place?
  
  1
I don't understand how this is getting approved.

Because you get promoted for changing things, not for keeping things the same. Almost every change like this is motivated by someone trying to get promoted.

1

I just want to have higher information density in google maps. Having to constantly zoom in to see buildings is a pain.

22

It's already an information overload. It would be nice to have more options on what information to show.

Sometimes I need to see street names and house numbers, sometimes I need to see the name of the burger place, but I don't ever need to see the name and ratings of each and every hotel and coffee shop in a 10 km radius.

It also ought to figure this out by itself. It already knows if I'm on foot, driving or using public transport. It already knows if I'm in my local area or traveling on the opposite side of the globe. They also know if I'm using the app for navigation or just browsing the map of distant places compared to my actual location.

They have so much data but still can't figure out to show relevant information.

29
- Probably because all information changes I've notes in the last few years have nothing to do with improving information access and all to do with monetizing it.
  
  6
- Especially since they started showing advertised businesses to me on the map. I've never been to a McDonald's, Google, and I know you know this about me so stop preferentially showing them when I pan around my map!
  
  Also please let me filter my search results. When I search "coffee shop" it'd be nice not to have to scroll past all the starbucks and gas stations to find small businesses.
  
  5

I hate that cold color palette :(

18

It's cold and has really shitty "inter item" contrast. I don't get how they think this is an improvement.

Sure, it screenshots better. It makes a "nicer" picture in isolation.

Problem is, maps is a tool not a piece of art. I don't care how "good" it looks. I care how effective it is at being a tool. If you can make it look better while still functioning, sure, no gripes here.

But the road contrast with the background has been severely increased. Problem is, roads are a step to getting somewhere. I'm not looking for roads. I'm looking for POIs. And when navigating, I'm looking for which road to take. Giving every road contrast against the background means everything else has less contrast against the roads.

I find it much harder to sift through seas of pins. But more importantly, the navigation "path" highlight has such little contrast to roads it's even harder to discern where I'm supposed to be going at a glance. Previously there was a high contrast blue line against literally everything else so I could look away from the road and in a split second know which way it wants me to head.

Now I have to try to pick the deeper slightly contrasted line out of a sea of lines which are all in high contrast against the background. And they're all even tinted blue. This removes two of your brains subconscious cues for picking these things out and it makes it significantly harder to discern without really paying more attention to the map. Which is literally not how navigation should work. Navigation is meant to be glanceable.

Honestly, this pushes me more to look for alternatives. But every other competing product is a joke and Google Maps still has the biggest feature set by miles so it's pretty futile.

10
- I moved to /e/ os so have been using magic earth which is preinstalled. Haven't felt the need to go back to gmaps yet.
  
  1
I really like it, but it'd be nice if they offered customization options for folks who feel differently.

https://osmand.net is also an open source option.

8
- I've tried OsmAnd, unfortunately it's too slow for me compared to pretty smooth operation of GMaps. I also use Google Timeline very extensively, with tagging all visited places and snap-to-road whenever I can. So far I haven't found any open-source direct replacement for Timeline, it can be pretty annoying at times (e.g. Google mangling already manually corrected routes and not telling me).
  
  7

That looks like a colorblind mode. The roads not using yellow and instead that muted gray is much worse.

16

Major roads are still yellow under neath just before the new colours load in and fuck it's awful

1
Me don't see no yellow roads. They are blue-ish grey for me.

1
As a colorblind person, this new color palette is so much fucking worse

1

14

holy shit I'm glad I saw this because i thought my screen was going or something, the colors are good but they're just barely different enough to where I thought I was going crazy

14

Maybe I just hate change, but isn't it much more difficult to differentiate between grass and water with the new colors? I find myself really preferring the old version, though I am used to it

13

finally a decent amount of contrast in their map

12

When navigating, there's now better contrast for the route.

10

I noticed this. It's much improved!

4
In my experience the contrast for navigation is worse. Unless I'm getting some separate A/B test or something, I don't see how you could argue it's better.

The background is essentially the same brightness as before, but roads are MUCH MUCH darker. And the nav is slightly darker. The route has less contrast with the roads around it and I've had a really hard time deciphering this on a dashboard/in sunlight. I really hope I'm just in some shitty A/B test or something.

3
- Hopefully you're right that it's AB testing, though not sure how they'd gauge your approval/disapproval of colour scheme.
  
  Going back to what I said earlier after further use - better contrast for the suggested route in daytime navigation, however, the nighttime colour scheme has worse contrast than before.
  
  1

Thanks I hate it.

9

Why would you change the roads to grey from yellow? What? What is the primary thing your eye is seeking when using a GPS app?

7

When using the general view? Typically landmarks and buildings so I appreciate this change. Roads are most important when using navigation, which they made much more vibrant. I'm finding these to be welcome changes.

3
- looking again, the greater contrast for smaller roads is nice.
  
  2

It looks a bit more legible than the old one.

7

It would be nice if they fixed their app so that when I set it to always dark mode, it actually stays in always dark mode. I don't have much faith in UI improvements when that bug has plagued me for literally years, across Android versions and devices. But now the colors that suddenly blind me when it changes from dark to light will be different, yay?

6

It seems to stay properly for me. My gripe is that it doesn't have an option for automatically changing based on the time of day without the OS also being set to do so.

6

Copy Apple Maps, acquire more iOS users.

3

This is too minor of a thing to really gripe about. Getting upset over this is like getting angry that Coke or Pepsi has altered the design of their logo again. It's just.. Not really a big deal.

-1