Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Google has officially announced the rollout of offline maps in Google Maps on Wear OS watches, including the Pixel Watch 1 and 2, OnePlus Watch, recent Galaxy Watches, and more. The feature has been slowly trickling for a couple of weeks, but it should now be available to everyone and I think you should put it to good use right away, just like I did before packing for a 10-day trip to Albania.
The truth is that no one plans to be lost in unfamiliar areas with no connection, but unexpected things do happen at the most unexpected of times. I like to be prepared, and since I live in a relatively new country and like to travel to even more unfamiliar places, I rely on Google Maps a lot to guide me around. I also always download the offline map of my current city to my phone, just in case I’m in an area with a spotty connection. But what happens when the phone’s battery runs out? Well, offline maps on smartwatches come to the rescue!
When your phone is out of reach or its battery is dead, having a backup offline map can be very handy — even on a tiny display.
If the feature is available to you, you’ll see a notice the moment you open the Maps app on your watch. Go ahead and scroll down, past the recent searches, and to the bottom of the options. Right above Settings, you’ll see a new Offline maps menu. Opening that reveals a new screen where you can manage your offline maps.
By default, nothing is downloaded to your watch, and the app explains that you need to first manage offline maps on your Android phone. So you start by downloading an area on Google Maps on your phone and once you do, you’ll see that map pop up as downloadable on the watch, just like you see with the Albania map below.
Tap to download, tap the checkmark, and you’ll see the download progress. If it’s a big map, you might want to leave your watch on a charger within your Wi-Fi network to speed up the process and avoid wasting battery life. Once the download is complete, you’ll see the map’s full size along with a checkmark next to it.
Now, you can tap that map again to delete it or just leave it be and go back to the main Maps app. In my experience, downloaded maps load much faster on the watch when I wanted to browse around and, as you can see in the two screenshots below, they do work offline (stricken cloud icon on top).
During my 10 days in Albania, I was able to use the map even when my phone was away or disconnected. I could zoom in and out as much as I wanted, right down to street level, check my surroundings in Shkoder, search for places in Tirana, and get driving directions in Vlore. Having that gave me a bit of extra peace of mind, knowing that I could return to my hotel even if my Pixel 9 Pro XL‘s battery collapsed under the stress of a million daily photos of the beautiful Albanian landscape.
The limitations here are similar to offline Google Maps on the phone. You don’t see ratings or reviews; you can’t get walking, transit, or biking directions; and there are no traffic updates when driving. I do understand the limitation behind some of these — ratings or reviews would take a lot of space, while transit and traffic require live updates — but I’m still a bit miffed that I can’t get basic walking or biking directions when offline. It shouldn’t require an internet connection to tell me how to walk from point A to point B.
Still, if you rely on Maps in your everyday life, this is a welcome bonus and a nifty trick — even on a tiny display — to make sure you have a backup plan when your phone is out of reach, or its battery is dead.