I disagree. I find the stronger contrast easier to pick out while driving. I found myself squinting a lot before.

Hrm, for me it's actually the opposite, although I only see the light mode while driving. But for that in particular, roads and ways are much much easier to make out.

I don't understand how this is getting approved.

Because you get promoted for changing things, not for keeping things the same. Almost every change like this is motivated by someone trying to get promoted.

It's already an information overload. It would be nice to have more options on what information to show.

Sometimes I need to see street names and house numbers, sometimes I need to see the name of the burger place, but I don't ever need to see the name and ratings of each and every hotel and coffee shop in a 10 km radius.

It also ought to figure this out by itself. It already knows if I'm on foot, driving or using public transport. It already knows if I'm in my local area or traveling on the opposite side of the globe. They also know if I'm using the app for navigation or just browsing the map of distant places compared to my actual location.

They have so much data but still can't figure out to show relevant information.

It's cold and has really shitty "inter item" contrast. I don't get how they think this is an improvement.

Sure, it screenshots better. It makes a "nicer" picture in isolation.

Problem is, maps is a tool not a piece of art. I don't care how "good" it looks. I care how effective it is at being a tool. If you can make it look better while still functioning, sure, no gripes here.

But the road contrast with the background has been severely increased. Problem is, roads are a step to getting somewhere. I'm not looking for roads. I'm looking for POIs. And when navigating, I'm looking for which road to take. Giving every road contrast against the background means everything else has less contrast against the roads.

I find it much harder to sift through seas of pins. But more importantly, the navigation "path" highlight has such little contrast to roads it's even harder to discern where I'm supposed to be going at a glance. Previously there was a high contrast blue line against literally everything else so I could look away from the road and in a split second know which way it wants me to head.

Now I have to try to pick the deeper slightly contrasted line out of a sea of lines which are all in high contrast against the background. And they're all even tinted blue. This removes two of your brains subconscious cues for picking these things out and it makes it significantly harder to discern without really paying more attention to the map. Which is literally not how navigation should work. Navigation is meant to be glanceable.

Honestly, this pushes me more to look for alternatives. But every other competing product is a joke and Google Maps still has the biggest feature set by miles so it's pretty futile.

I really like it, but it'd be nice if they offered customization options for folks who feel differently.

https://osmand.net is also an open source option.

As a colorblind person, this new color palette is so much fucking worse

Me don't see no yellow roads. They are blue-ish grey for me.

Major roads are still yellow under neath just before the new colours load in and fuck it's awful

I noticed this. It's much improved!

In my experience the contrast for navigation is worse. Unless I'm getting some separate A/B test or something, I don't see how you could argue it's better.

The background is essentially the same brightness as before, but roads are MUCH MUCH darker. And the nav is slightly darker. The route has less contrast with the roads around it and I've had a really hard time deciphering this on a dashboard/in sunlight. I really hope I'm just in some shitty A/B test or something.

It seems to stay properly for me. My gripe is that it doesn't have an option for automatically changing based on the time of day without the OS also being set to do so.

When using the general view? Typically landmarks and buildings so I appreciate this change. Roads are most important when using navigation, which they made much more vibrant. I'm finding these to be welcome changes.