See your location history dashboard and more with Google Maps 5.3 for Android

Monday, April 4, 2011 | 12:35 PM

Today, we’re happy to announce Google Maps 5.3 for Android, which lets you see your Google Location History dashboard, check in at “home,” and add your own aspects for places when rating them.

Location History dashboard
If you’ve enabled Location History for Google Latitude, you’ve been able to visualize interesting trends in your location history with a personal dashboard at google.com/latitude on your computer. Now, you can also see your dashboard on your phone by tapping View location history from your Latitude profile. You’ll be able to see right on your phone how far you’ve travelled as well as an estimate of how much time you’ve spent at home, at work, or out.

If you haven’t yet, you can enable Location History from your computer or from Latitude’s Settings menu on your phone. Location History is 100% opt-in and is private to you and nobody else. You can always delete any of your location history from the Manage History tab or correct the estimated work and home locations from the dashboard on your computer.

View your location history dashboard from your Latitude profile on your phone and see estimates of where you’ve spent your time.

Check in at home
Now that you can see how much time you spend at “home”, you might want to let friends know when you’re there. Checking in at places using Latitude is another way to keep a history of places you’ve been and also lets you share when you’re there. I love letting friends and family know when I’m at a cafe or park, but sometimes I want them to know that I’m relaxing at home or made it back safely from a road trip. So now, I can start checking in at “home” in Latitude:
  1. Check in from Latitude and tap “Home - Tap to set your location” at the bottom of the nearby places list if you don’t have one yet.
  2. Use the estimated current address or enter in your home address yourself.
  3. Once you’ve checked in at home once, “Home” will appear at the top of the list when you’re checking in near there.

Like Latitude and other check-ins, checking in at home is entirely opt-in. Your set “home” location is not searchable and only you can check in there. Just like any other check-in, you can choose with whom to share your home check-ins (along with your name and address info).

Add your own aspects for places
When you’re rating places on the go in Maps using Google Places with Hotpot, you could always quickly leave feedback on a specific aspect or characteristic of a place, such as the food or ambiance. Before, we’d automatically include aspects about places that were commonly mentioned in reviews. Now, you can add your own aspects for each place. So if you think a place has a beautiful view or great music, you can add it yourself and quickly share it with the world.

When rating places, you can add your own aspects like “music” for places and leave quick feedback.

To get started, update Google Maps from Android Market on devices with Android OS 1.6+ anywhere Google Maps and Latitude are already available.

66 comments:

Tenkely said...

Love the mobile dashboard, and the home check in option is sweet. Nice job!

Unknown said...

Update version on the Android Market still shows 5.2.1! Someone needs to update the update version! :P But otherwise, like the update! Awesome!

The Welch Family said...

I really hope they reduced the amount of battery Latitude uses in this version! It's becoming impracticable to keep it enabled when it drains so much battery.

Unknown said...

Check-ins still not working with Apps Account (because not working Buzz on AA?). And second problem is battery hog on Nexus S and Android 2.3.3 since Google Maps 5.2.0. It's constantly checking location in interval shorter than 30 seconds... days, weeks, months... eating battery everytime Latitude is running (even when I have selected my location manually).

Tenkely said...

Weird, I'm not having the same battery issues as you two (Nexus One 2.3.3)

Piotr Jaroszyński's blog said...

Don't really see the option to check in at home. Is this worldwide?

bishop said...

Checkins are still not availavle in Russia.

mikepags said...

Where is Buzz for Apps accounts?!

monkeyruler90 said...

Not available to check in at home :(

Piotr Jaroszyński's blog said...

I'm from Poland and checking in does work. I don't see the option to check in at home though.

Unknown said...

Latitude widget's gone, will it come back soon? I used it frequently.

Tenkely said...

@ Mmaestro
Just re-add it. My disappeared after I updated too.

Unknown said...

Can't find, how to "Check in at home"???

Unknown said...

Still not available for users in Ukraine :-(
Thank you guys for such discrimination

Amblin said...

I hope this fixes the battery drain problems. I had to disable latitude because of it.

Owen Swart said...

How do we change the location for Home? I accidentally set it to the wrong address :/

Owen Swart said...

How do we change the Home location? I accidentally set mine to the wrong address, and can't see where to change it :-/

Pablo said...

Google should be focused on solving the critical bugs it introduced in its latest releases regarding BATTERY life and making sure it doesn't happen again; instead of introducing less important updates. :(

(I hope they already are)

Foster said...

I have not been able to figure out how to check in at home. When I have Maps open I press menu and go to Latitude. Then either press Check-In from the List screen or press my icon and go to that window and press check-in. But from there the list of places to check in at does not give me the option to "Use the estimated current address or enter in your home address yourself".

Help?

BTW I love Latitude. Don't have a problem with battery drain either with my Nexus One running 2.3.3.

Scott Pettersen said...

I would rather see the Actual locations with the time. Like you can do on the web version. I already know how much time I spent at work etc. It's nice to see the dates and times of the places I visited on vacation etc. The

The Welch Family said...

This makes me wonder if the battery issues are Nexus S specific. Anyone using a Nexus S and NOT having battery issues?

Marcus said...

I'm getting performance issues.
When clicking location history it lags up my phone, and I can't scroll the page once it actually opens.
Same with Check in page.

RJ McKenzie said...

I can't set a home location either as described. Doesn't show up in the list to set.

Samuel said...

UK, tmob, no check in at home :/ any other UK people stuck too? Google...?

Unknown said...

i think it's broken. if i tap "manage your places" in latitude's settings as i want to edit/change my home location, it's like it thinks i've tapped back, and then other functions dont work as expected. more testing required!

Kyhwana said...

I can't figure out how to check in to Home either. I guess google bungled this update :P

BobbieJoG said...

Husband updated maps and soon as he did , he cant get any apps in the market and his downloads are not showing. Also his mobile data wont work now..

grindking said...

I have no idea why so many people are complaining of battery problems. I have a Nexus S and I couldn't be happier with the battery life. I have easily made it 2 days without a charge with moderate usage, heavy usage I've never had to charge it before I go to sleep. I have used latitude for a long time and have never had any battery issues related as well.

Unknown said...

Why can't I update Google Maps on my Droid? When I go to Market and select maps and click update, then the screen shows me the downloading button already activated and the progress bar in motion with the caption 'starting download' but nothing every happens. What's up with that?

The Welch Family said...

@grindking

Since you have the Nexus S and are not having any battery issues, do you mind looking in your battery usage for the Google Maps usage stats? After being unplugged for 15 hours, here's what mine says for Google Maps:

CPU total: 9m 9s
CPU foreground: 44s
Keep awake: 1h 35m 5s
GPS: 2m 17s
Data sent: 210.83 KB
Data received: 1.06 MB

Unknown said...

Thanks Google for now allowing me to track how many hours I sit on my ass at home. Ugh, please allow me to turn that off.

grindking said...

@Mike

I didn't use latitude too much today because I was busy, but here are my stats afer 12.5 hours from being plugged in:

CPU total 4m 33s
CPU foreground 59s
Keep Awake 1h 48m 37s

I don't have a listing for gps because cell tower location usually picks up on the places I check in at

Rob S said...

Why is Latitude so frustrating to use? Check-ins are pointless when some dimwit has entered a BS name for a location. I'm unable to check-in at "Home" because some other resident of my apartment building has given the corresponding address a fake name and Latitude tries to force the address of the building next to me as my home location.

raumgleiter said...

Still not available in Thailand. This sucks.... back to Foursquare...

Unknown said...

Can't seem to 'check in at home' here in Australia on Desire HD?

RJ McKenzie said...

One thing you can try for the check in at home thing is to set your home location using a web browser instead of the Google Maps app for Android. I went into my Google Latitude dashboard on my computer and set my home and work locations from there. Google Latitude had them messed up since I work 3rd shift and I am at work during the night. Since it said it may take up to 24 hours to work, I wasn't able to test this out. Hopefully it will be working this morning when I get home. And hopefully this will solve others issues as well.

Love Google Latitude, keep up the good work guys.

Unknown said...

Hello Goooogle ...

Love the maps but i am stuck with version 5.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0


Can you please push the updated out to other parts of the world.
A small European country and we still dont have this stuff ... please push it out to us as well ...

@Nexus owner here !

jpalko said...

Great new features. Still waiting for navigation for Finland though... :)

Snapphane said...

I can see "home", but how do I check in "at work"?

Patrick_R said...

Another who isn't seeing any Check in at home option either.

T-mobile UK.

Is it a bungled Maps Update issue, or is it due to there still being no Google Apps support for Buzz.

And the biggest question of all... do we even expect Google to answer!

RJ McKenzie said...

Updating you home address here https://www.google.com/latitude/b/0/history/dashboard worked for allowing me to check in at home. I did take a few hours like it said, but it does work now. I'm thinking mine was messed up because I work 3rd shift. It had work as my home and home as my work.. I set it straight now. Thanks again Google. This update to Google Latitude might make me quit using Foursquare. This is all automatic!

abe said...

I like maps and navigation, but on the maps locations it gives distances in KM instead of miles, was hoping this latest update would fix it, it didn't. If I go to places it also gives distance in KM, how do I fix this or when will Google fix it? Thanks, Abe

Unknown said...

Set home location last night and checked in. Switched phone on this morning and the home location has gone along with the option to enter it. Tried reinstalling but no joy, very bizarre.

Unknown said...

@Abe, it depends on your locale. If you'll use `us english`, then you'll have everything in miles & english.
I tried to use `russian` locale, and the maps app turned to russian language + KM.

Unfortunately there no any settings to change it manually...

abe said...

Vagif, Thanks; I'm in New Hampshire. Miles switched to KM's 2-3 updates ago. I'd hoped that today's update would fix it. After the update I uninstalled map updates, now back to miles. I turned off/on and again updated, back to KM's when using places. Navigation is OK. Guess I'll uninstall again and stay there.

Nice to meet you, my name is Speed Bumpie said...

To everyone else having difficulty checking in at Home. I had the same problem on Nexus One 2.3.3. Issue was rectified by visiting Latitude on desktop, clicking the history tab and then establishing a physical address associated with my home location. Once I did that, my phone instantly began recognizing Home.

Hope this helps

Unknown said...

by the way - automatically `check-in` doesn't work for me...
On Nexus One 2.3.3 & Nexis S 2.3.3 & LG Optimus-T 2.2

Unknown said...

I can not check in anywhere on my Nexus S since the last OS upgrade

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't Google plan to release Navigation on Apple's iPhone? I think it's a wonderful idea. I realise it's an open source venture but why don't they charge just a small amount for their application? A guaranteed income stream from an incredibly popular app.

pomac said...

Ok, found out how to make it work now.

It turns out that google maps has already located my home, since location history was enabled - this makes it IMPOSSIBLE to set "home location".

If you turn off Location history - the "home" selection will appear as a selectable item in the "check in" list...

Odd "bug"

Anonymous said...

No support for Google Apps accounts? I love ya Google, but this is ridiculous

Unknown said...

Can one turn off the much hated search bar on top of the screen with this version? Until that search bar can be turned off I will stay with 4.3.1.

Unknown said...

Auto check-in has not worked in any version of maps since the feature launched. Is this a well known issue? Also, when I go to manage places within Latitude, the latest version seems to just hang indefinitely.

Traveler Nick said...

Why is the routing of the App different then the online Google map routing? Not in a better way either. It often picks the worst route option while the online does a much better job.

Unknown said...

I'm not sure where I can post suggestions, but I wish there is a way to install more "layers"/"services"/plugins (...not sure what to call them) like facebook places, foursquare, yelp!, gasbuddy...it be nice to see, update or "check-in" into those "layers"/"services" all in a single app.

I also like to see a home screen WIDGET on android that lists and gives short details of "places" located near by. And the short details should include info found in gasbuddy, facebook places, foursquare, or yelp!. All sorted by ranking, price, distance.

Steve said...

This version has broken My Maps content display. The user created content cannot be scrolled down. Only the first few lines show. This is a serious problem.

If I uninstall 5.3 and revert to 5.0 the content is displayed. I have repeated this installation/uninstallation many times.

I have also tried 5.2 which has the same problem.

Device Motorola Atrix. Please note this problem is also reported in other forums. Please fix as My Maps is awesome!

UnlimitedTotalHomeImprovements said...

Why can't I shut the screen off on my phone when in navigation mode. I really don't need the screen on the entire time draining my battery. Please fix this! Until then I have switched back to 5.2

Unknown said...

@UnlimitedTotalHomeImprovements, "minimize your application" - just simply click to the `home` button. Then you can turn you phone off.

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Ahmed.A said...

Why is the google maps pulled altogether from the market in Saudi Arabia.
I understand there is no navigation, but for gods sake even maps is being denied.

Krzysztof Wolny said...

I also cannot see check-in home option...

Kyhwana said...

Where's the changelog for 5.3.1, eh?

Unknown said...

please fix heavy battery drain on NEXUS S with latitude activated... pleaseeeeee

jojopig.com said...

impressive. Thanks.

Daniel said...

Still no option to "Check-in at Home" and how do you create a work location? This is useless to me unless they fix the option and give me the option to create a home place.

vivek said...

How to get navigation pane?
All I see on screen is map with North towards front (the map shall rotate with my direction and shall appear 3D in structure so that it can make us feel the direction we have to go.)

Is there any manual available for maps?