Some Google Maps users just lost a key feature for avoiding crowds

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If you’re only using Google Maps to plot a route from point A to point B, you are seriously missing out on a lot. In addition to offering useful discovery tools for finding new places worth visiting, Maps also makes it possible to strategize your travels so you don’t show up somewhere at its busiest time of the day. But now, for some reason, users are having trouble viewing popular times in Maps.

Google collects location data from Maps users to help generate the bar graph you see depicting popular times for destinations. In addition to just giving you a general overview of when you might want to plan your trip to best avoid crowds, it also offers a live view of what those crowds look like right at the moment, arming you with a lot of useful info.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, but right now, a lot of Maps users are having trouble finding this report at all. In a thread from the Google Maps Reddit sub this week, multiple users report seeing the popular times view vanish from Maps location listings. The Android Authority crew took a look at Maps on our own devices, while it’s missing for some of us, other still have it — even on the same Maps version 26.32.06.958047303 release.

The idea of Google moving around where we see popular times within Maps isn’t unheard of, but even after digging through all corners of the UI, it just seems to be entirely missing on affected devices. Even for accounts where we no longer see popular times in the Maps app on Android, we’re still able to view them in Maps on the web. That makes this feel a bit more like a glitch than an intentional removal, but for the moment we can’t speak with much certainty to Google’s intention here.

In the interest of doing something about that, we’ve reached out to Google to see if the company has any news to share about popular times in Maps, and maybe learn if we can expect its return anytime soon. We’ll update you with any details we’re able to pick up. In the meantime, let us know in the poll above if you’ve run into this same issues with Maps on your own phone.

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