Google Maps for Android will soon add a nifty search widget

At Search On 2021, Google today announced new features aimed at tackling the effects of climate change. For governments, Google announced that it will expand its Tree Canopy insights to more than 100 cities globally next year, which will help them prioritize which areas need tree shade the most. For users, Google is launching a wildfire layer in Google Maps, which gives users up-to-date information about nearby fires in times of emergency. The wildfire layer in Google Maps is rolling out globally this week on Android with version 11.0.1 of the Maps app. The update not only brings the wildfire layer in areas where that info is available, but it also contains a new search widget that will help you quickly find places nearby.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Version 11.0.1 of the Google Maps app contains code for a fully functional search widget, though the widget is not yet accessible to users. We know what the widget will look like, though, since a preview was included within the app’s resources. It looks very similar to the search widget that Google Maps for iOS added early last month. The arrival of the search widget on Android is a bit late, but it comes on the heels of the stable release of Android 12 next week.

On Pixel devices running Android 12, the Maps search widget will support dynamic colors. On devices running Android 11, however, the widget will presumably use blue accent colors like Google’s other widgets.

Google Maps (Free, Google Play) →

Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.

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