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Akshay Gangwar / Android Authority

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TL;DR

• Ask Maps in Google Maps could let you share entire conversations via a link, similar to the Gemini app.
• Users can currently copy and paste an Ask Maps response, but this method omits crucial URLs.
• We’re also seeing early evidence that suggests Ask Maps could be renamed to Ask and moved to the app’s search bar.

While Google Maps has added a handful of AI features recently, Ask Maps may be among the most useful. It taps into Gemini to answer questions about a specific place, find the best restaurants in that area, and more, all in a familiar chatbot-style experience. One particular shortcoming of Ask Maps, though, is that it doesn’t let you share a link to the conversation. However, Google may change that in a forthcoming update.

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Looking at version 26.41.00 of Google Maps, we’ve located a string that specifically mentions sharing Ask Maps conversations in the form of a public link:

Code

<string name="ASK_MAPS_CONVERSATION_SHARE_SHEET_TITLE">Public link to conversation</string>

Google Maps currently lets you copy an individual Ask Maps response using a dedicated button at the bottom. However, the copied content doesn’t include links to the places mentioned in the response. With that in mind, adding a way to share a link, like in Gemini, would be a logical next step for this conversational search feature in Maps.

While we couldn’t surface the public link option in an Ask Maps chat, poking around the app helped us enable a three-dot menu on the chat history page. This menu contains the Manage shared links option, which opens the Shared public links page for all your shared Ask Maps chats.

Meanwhile, the three-dot menu on the chat history page also includes a Delete all option, which should save you the trouble of manually deleting each Ask Maps conversation from chat history.

Lastly, we’re also seeing work towards integrating the Ask Maps button directly into the search bar, as the fourth screenshot above shows. Google also appears to be shortening it to just Ask, which is understandable given the space constraints. In its current form, Ask Maps sits just below the search bar among the row of pill-shaped shortcuts (Home, Restaurants, Gas, Shopping, and others).

These are some key changes to the existing Ask Maps interface, though like with most early discoveries, it’s too early to tell whether or when Google will ultimately implement them.

⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

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