If you’ve ever wished that your Garmin smartwatch could do a better job of helping you find the restaurant you’re late for dinner at, you’re in luck. From today, Garmin has announced that the Google Maps app is available to download (for free, as you’d expect) from its Connect IQ Store.
When open, Maps provides turn-by-turn directions as notifications on the watch display, allowing you to leave your phone in your pocket. Once you’ve entered a location in your Android (iOS doesn’t appear to be supported, despite the Connect IQ app’s presence on Apple’s App Store) phone’s Google Maps app, the watch will sync with it and gently vibrate for each new direction. If you’d rather not keep looking at your wrist every few minutes, you can tap into the app and memorise the next three turns.
Google Maps already works with the Apple Watch and Wear OS devices, with the latter also supporting offline maps that let you leave the phone at home — so Garmin is very much playing catch-up here. But if you rely on the company’s products for fitness purposes, it’s a pretty useful addition. Garmin says you’ll still be able to record walks, runs or bike rides as you would normally, and no fitness tracking features are interrupted by Google Maps running in the background.
Garmin says select Venu, Forerunner, Vivoactive and Fenix products are supported. You can view the full list here.
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