MapQuest now runs on Android Auto. The support arrived in the app’s September update. MapQuest’s own Play Store changelog leads with it and labels it a beta. If you have the app installed and your phone connects to a car head unit, MapQuest should now appear alongside Google Maps and Waze in the Android Auto launcher.
What the MapQuest Android Auto update includes
The Android Auto build is not the only thing in this release. MapQuest also added crowdsourced hazard reporting, the feature that made Waze what it is. The changelog describes it in the developer’s own words:
Incident reporting (beta) – Report road crashes, closures, traffic, police activity, and other incidents. Alerts from other drivers coming soon.
Read that last sentence carefully. You can file reports now, but you cannot yet receive other drivers’ reports. That is the half of the feature that actually helps you avoid a jam. Until the alerts side ships, incident reporting is a one-way street where you supply data and get nothing back. The update also changes units to default to metric or imperial based on your region.
Android Authority reports that early testers are finding the Android Auto build rough, including a stray notification referencing CarPlay, which suggests the code was adapted quickly from MapQuest’s existing iPhone app. That tracks with MapQuest calling it a beta rather than a launch.
Why a 30-year-old map app is suddenly shipping features
MapQuest has been sprinting since it climbed the US app charts in late August, a surge that followed its refusal to adopt the “Lake America” renaming that Google Maps and Apple Maps went along with. MapQuest says the run is its highest chart position in three decades, with usage running roughly 50 times its normal rate, as reported by 9to5Google.
Worth knowing who benefits from that traffic. MapQuest is owned by System1, a publicly traded advertising and customer-acquisition company that bought the brand from Verizon in 2019. Its business is matching advertiser demand to consumer traffic. That does not make MapQuest a bad navigation app, and System1 markets several of its consumer properties on privacy grounds. But a navigation app is one of the richest location-data sources a phone produces, and a new incident-reporting feature asks you to send even more of it. Before you switch your daily commute over, it is worth opening the app’s location permission and checking whether it is set to “While using the app” rather than “Allow all the time.”
How to get it
Update MapQuest to the latest version from the Play Store, then plug into or wirelessly connect to a compatible head unit. Android Auto only shows navigation apps it recognises, so if MapQuest does not appear immediately, restart the phone with the app already updated. Because the feature is a beta on MapQuest’s side rather than a staged Google rollout, availability depends on the app version, not on a server-side flag.
For anyone weighing whether to move off Google’s app, note that Maps has been adding to its own Android Auto experience too, including immersive navigation views. MapQuest’s pitch right now is not that it is better. It is that it is different, and that it is not Google.
Sources: MapQuest on Google Play, 9to5Google, Android Authority
