Best navigation app for Android Auto

I’m taking delivery of a new car tomorrow which has Android Auto,  I’m guessing Google maps will be suitable but does anyone use anything better, preferably with voice prompts. If it makes any difference,  I’m in Spain.

Thanks in advance

Google maps works really well. I’ve also tried Waze, which was OK but I prefer Google maps.

Try HereWeGo, can download offline maps

I use to Tom Tom go, costs 20 quid per year. I don’t use Google maps for a couple of reasons

– Google maps needs a connection to the Internet to find places, even though you can download the maps for offline use.
– I prefer a top down 2d  track up view which Google maps won’t do

Im like the 97% who use Google Maps.
Infinitely better than the built in Ford Sat Nav in my Kuga !

Google maps.

Tom Tom has one of the worst UI’s know to man. Only pushed into second place by their address search feature.

Google maps.
You can download journeys on WiFi if needed.
It.
Just.
Works.

My own personal favourite is TomTom, but I have to point out it’s a subscription app in order to get the best out of it. I was ‘encouraged’ to use it for my job as a logistics driver, because my team leader used a standalone TomTom satnav, and he kept moaning when I arrived at a location later than him. Of course it didn’t register with him that we were approaching the same location from completely different directions! As a result, I’ve been using it for getting on for eight years so I’ve got a lot of routes and destinations set up.
Google Maps seem to be ok, once you sus out how to download map segments with a route on in case of signal loss.
It’s for that reason I prefer a self-contained app with all the maps installed, like Waze, Here, and CoPilot. Waze has live traffic, which is very handy; I used it for a while before going over to TomTom, and it worked ok, HERE WeGo worked ok as well, but it was seven/ eight years ago I used those, and that’s a lot of upgrades! There are others around now, like Navitel Navigator, NaviMaps 3D, which has a four star rating, CoPilot is still around for car, caravan and truck…
To reiterate, I have personal experience, albeit some years back, of three navigation apps, and while each had their idiosyncrasies, all worked, and probably work a lot better now, as phones have improved and can process information faster.
I can only suggest that you check them out, and if possible, give them a try, see how you get on – I think I had four installed at one point, possibly six.

Tom Tom has one of the worst UI’s know to man. Only pushed into second place by their address search feature.

They’re not alone, there, but postcode searches are a horrorshow anyway, especially in rural areas. I do my search first with what3words to find the exact location, then export the search into TomTom. That way my destination is literally right to the garden gate!

The same can be done with Waze, I think as well as Google and Apple Maps. I can’t confirm with other standalone apps, because I no longer have any others installed.

i used google maps for many years but moved over to Waze a couple of years back. for me it does a better job of managing my commute when i go to the office (my commute has quite a lot of options dependant on traffic and i just find Waze better at doing that)

I also prefer the route planning overview interface and the way it lays out options for re-routing 

I dont like the ads it pops up when you stop at traffic lights – but really i dont do much of that sort of driving so for me, i rarely see them 

Im like the 97% who use Google Maps.
Infinitely better than the built in Ford Sat Nav in my Kuga !

Same with the on board sat nav in my Skoda Octavia. The interface and address search is dreadful. It doesn’t do traffic updates unless you pay a subscription.  Google does real time traffic updates and changes routes accordingly on the fly – for free.

If you use the Google universe a lot like I do, it integrates really well with it. If you’ve googled places on your phone in the house, or on a PC they’ll pop up on your dash as suggestions to navigate to as soon as you fire up Android Auto.  You can use voice commands to navigate to any entry in your contacts list, as well as adding stuff to your shopping list or turning your central heating on etc.  As said above, it might be a bit boring because everyone uses it, but it just works really well with no fuss.

Google maps works well for me, including off line if need be.

Use Waze a lot, I drive a lot for work and it’s pretty good.

Lately it has changed the class of vehicle to taxi a couple for some unknown reason. Which is annoying and will cost a fine if you blindly follow it.

Also if I’m working around SE London, it loves the Rotherhithe tunnel, which is costly if you have MGW over 2t, IE most vans.

Sygic is £26 a year with 3 or 4 mapping updates per year. I use it in preference to the built in Sat Nav on my car.

Google maps works well for me, including off line if need be.

True, however, if you happen to be staying somewhere with no cellular service, getting further updates might be problematic. I have had exactly that issue in the past camping in South Hams, Devon. There’s no phone service at all where I was, so having installed mapping made a big difference.
Trying to update the system in my Ford is a nightmare, I even downloaded the files from Ford, several gigabytes worth, and then found it wouldn’t install in the car because of something to do with the file system. I spent ages phaffing around with it, but my garage will charge me £100 to do it. I just preset the route on my phone indoors, then start the car and plug the phone into one of the USB ports and it’s sorted, just so much easier. I pay a subscription, but I’m prepared to do so for something that functions properly, and has done for years. The regular updates is a part of that, I get probably one a month on average.

Another Here We Go User. Download the country map and use off line…. Free to use. Update or get new maps when you get a Wifey signal… 

My car has Android Automotive, so not sure if it’s the same for vanilla Google Maps on a phone. But you can zoom to any area and save that as an offline map – rather than just a route.

I find waze timing more accurate than Google but I prefer the look of Google maps so mainly use that.
Slightly off topic. My android auto is wired so I bought one of these. Works a treat unless you have more than one registered phone in the car, then it is pot luck. Other disadvantage is you don’t get phone charging ‘for free’!

Motorola MA1 Wireless Android Car Adapter –  https://amzn.eu/d/ilo5BUB

slight thread hijack – I saw a BRAND NEW 23 plate car in  car park the other day… had a lovely big screen/radio thing in the middle…clearly would have android auto/carplay… so WHY ON EARTH did the driver have a “fugly huge ‘stick on the windscreen’ stand alone satnav with cables dangling everywhere” device…?

I’m never one to tell people how to live their lives, but SURELY they must have a modern phone, that would simly plug into the advanced head unit in their brand new car…??!!

odd

Made me disproportionately angry!

DrP

CountZero

True, however, if you happen to be staying somewhere with no cellular service, getting further updates might be problematic. I have had exactly that issue in the past camping in South Hams, Devon. There’s no phone service at all where I was, so having installed mapping made a big difference.

If you have pre-downloaded maps (which you can do in Google Maps), I’m 99% sure the nav will still work without phone signal.
It won’t give you traffic updates, until you get back into phone service, but it will navigate OK.
You can download map segments for free & they stay stored for quite a while.

I’m never one to tell people how to live their lives, but SURELY they must have a modern phone, that would simly plug into the advanced head unit in their brand new car…??!!

Maybe they prefer to have their phone turned off when driving to avoid dangerous distractions like phone calls?

prefer a top down 2d  track up view

I think it does.

Google maps just works 99% of the time. Had a few interesting, long gravel road drives in Spain, but we really are a bit remote. Ended up doing 18km of rough gravel instead of it directing us to the end of an asphalt road which would have left us with 4km of smooth gravel. This is in the van, not on the bike.

DrP

slight thread hijack – I saw a BRAND NEW 23 plate car in car park the other day… had a lovely big screen/radio thing in the middle…clearly would have android auto/carplay… so WHY ON EARTH did the driver have a “fugly huge ‘stick on the windscreen’ stand alone satnav with cables dangling everywhere” device…?

Some people just don’t know/aren’t interested in this kind of tech, so aren’t even aware it exists.
A colleague of mine bought an A5 and must have owned it for >6 months when we were talking in the office about Android Auto.
He kept saying he didn’t think his car had it, but then came in the next day absolutely bubbling with enthusiasm as he’d installed Android Auto on his phone, plugged it in & it started working.

My brother had his MkI TT for about a year before realising it had heated seats. We went somewhere in it & I asked him if he used the heated seats much. He said it didn’t have heated seats – so I pushed the button – one of those pop-out knob types, twiddled it and voila, heated seats.
And he’d owned a Golf for a similar amount of time & was moaning how rubbish it was at clearing the windscreen. I told him it should be pretty quick if he turned the AC on. After a few mins of ‘it doesn’t have AC’, ‘yes it does’…..we went out to the car & I asked him to press the button with the letters “AC” on it & see what happens. A revelation!!

Maybe they prefer to have their phone turned off when driving to avoid dangerous distractions like phone calls?

Incredibly easy to set up your phone to do this – and by set up, I mean you do it once, and from then on, your phone knows you are in your car and switches to that mode automatically. 

Waze or Google maps. I have it in my head that the social elements of Waze allow for quicker updates for incidents. It can also show the location of mobile speed traps and police which may interest some.

6 and 2 3s really.

Of the ones I’ve tried (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, Tom Tom), I still have a huge preference for TomTom. It’s re-routing around traffic seems way more active than the others – which is really 99% of what I want a satnav to do. I also love the route bar info that gives a nice summary of what’s ahead on your route.

“fugly huge ‘stick on the windscreen’ stand alone satnav with cables dangling everywhere” device…?

That was me until about a year ago when I installed a CarPlay compatible system – though I had the unit all nicely hard wired – dangling cables are a complete no no. In their slight defence there are some nice features on the Tom Tom standalone units that haven’t yet made it to the Tom Tom phone app. eg. my old standalone unit could tell me the price of fuel at petrol stations and the available capacity in car parks. 

. If it makes any difference, I’m in Spain.

Another vote for Google maps. My dad lives in Spain and uses it all the time.

Google maps got me from Calais to Venice, via Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria. Advanced warnings and alternative routes for any roadworks

It found toll and toll free roads, campsites, petrol stations, Lidl.

Maps are downloadable if needed, but most of the stuff will work via GPS if there’s no mobile signal

my old standalone unit could tell me the price of fuel at petrol stations

the tomtom app does this, just press the menu button then click petrol stations, and it shows you all the petrol stations in the vicinity with the prices of either petrol or diesel (depending on what fuel type you told it your car uses), its pretty good.

Maybe the satnav user has similar trouble with Google maps that I do where rather than sending you a sensible route (M74 to East Kilbride) using main roads it sends you through housing schemes, down farm tracks and then tells you to walk a mile across fields to where you are trying to get to.

I honestly prefer using a Garmin to Google maps, you don’t have issues using it offline either. It actually does just work.

Ford updates are a pain but not that difficult if you’re moderately IT competent. Which is pretty poor tbh as I’d guess most folk aren’t, you can enable OTA updates but IIRC you need to connect to your home WiFi (with all the privacy issues that comes with it) as it won’t do it Iver the built in modem.

Thanks for the feedback,  I’ve had a play with the setup and it seems the Android Auto only works if the phone is connected with a cable despite the touchscreen recognising the phone via Bluetooth.  Is this normal? Tried a couple of searches on Google Maps and it gives me turn by turn voice guidance albeit in very  odd Spanish street naming! MrsPB has been less successful as her I Phone usb port is on the blink, she’s been wirelessly charging it for a few weeks but obviously that  doesn’t work for data transfer.

Android Auto only works if the phone is connected with a cable despite the touchscreen recognising the phone via Bluetooth.  Is this normal? 

certainly common on many vehicles. 

Is this normal?

Yes unless your car has wireless Android auto, or you buy a gadget such as aawireless to give you wireless Android auto

so WHY ON EARTH did the driver have a “fugly huge ‘stick on the windscreen’ stand alone satnav with cables dangling everywhere” device…?

You say it was a brand new car. Guy I know delivers new cars to their new owners (often collecting a car as well), he takes his own TomTom everywhere so he doesn’t have to touch the infotainment system in the new car he’s delivering. Possibly for a few reasons, so the car is delivered pristine incl the info system, so he doesn’t have to learn a new info system every time he gets in a car, so it reduces the possibility of any navigation errors.

Back on topic, I use waze or Google. I like the layout of Google, but like the user updates on waze (police camara location etc). Not sure if I’m mistaken, but I think I’ve noticed some user updates starting to appear on Google ie location of a broken down car in the road.