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After the deprecation of Assistant Driving Mode earlier this year, Google Maps is now missing media playback controls for YouTube Music and Spotify on Android.
Update 7/21: Google tells us today that it is “actively working to fix an issue that is affecting media playback controls on Google Maps.” The disappearance was just a bug.
Original 7/19: With the removal of Driving Mode, users had to use the “Show media playback controls” feature that works with apps like YouTube Music and Spotify.
When navigating, this extends the bottom sheet with a bar that has album art, song name, and artist at the left. In addition to playback controls at the right, tapping “Browse” shows nine suggestions to quickly switch. There’s also a shortcut to “Open YouTube Music.”
Enabling this blocks the bottom half of the “Report” button, but it’s still tappable.
Old vs. new
As of Google Maps 25.28 (stable) and 25.29 (beta), these media controls have disappeared over the past week or so. Settings > Navigation loses the “Show media playback controls” toggle and “Default media app” option.
It’s unclear whether this is a bug as the feature remains available on iOS today. Without Assistant Driving Mode, Google Maps really should provide easy access to media controls. Hopefully, this is not an intentional removal.
Thanks Dan
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