Google Maps’ alternate route suggestions are borked, with no fix in sight

In addition to offering the most optimal route to your destination, Google Maps displays alternate routes in real time while driving that are marginally slower or faster than your current route. These alternate routes can be particularly helpful in cases where you encounter traffic or a roadblock on your current route. However, if you’ve used Google Maps to navigate of late, you may have noticed that the app has stopped offering alternate route suggestions.

According to multiple user reports on Reddit and Google’s community forums (via 9to5Google), Google Maps has stopped showing alternate routes while driving. The issue seems to have started sometime in the past few weeks and affects Google Maps users on Android and Android Auto. None of the usual fixes, like restarting the app, clearing its cache, or rebooting the phone, seem to resolve the issue.

Although Google has yet to acknowledge the issue or highlight the underlying cause, it’s speculated to be the result of a bug introduced in a recent app or server-side update. It’s not immediately clear if the issue is widespread, as Stephen Schenck from our team has confirmed seeing alternate route suggestions while driving as recently as last weekend. At the moment, we can’t confirm whether the problem also affects Google Maps on iOS and Apple CarPlay.

We expect Google to shed light on the matter in the coming days, and we’ll update this post as soon as we have more details. Until then, you can drop a comment below if you’ve recently encountered this issue on your phone.