Google announced the return of the compass in a support post discovered by Android Police. Apparently, Google was driven to reinstate the compass after receiving “overwhelming” feedback in support of the tool following its removal in 2019. “You wanted it and we heard you! We’re excited to announce the return of the compass on Maps for Android,” Google Maps’ community manager Shweta wrote in that support post. “The compass was removed from Maps for Android in early 2019 in an effort to clean up the Navigation screen but due to overwhelming support it’s back!”
The compass will appear on the side of the screen whenever you use Maps to navigate to a destination. The widget, for those who don’t remember, is fairly plain in its implementation, only offering a red arrow that continuously points north even as your relative position rotates. Still, that’s enough to satisfy the functionality requirements of a compass, so in this case, its simplicity doesn’t really matter all that much.
Google says that the compass is returning to the Android version of Maps in version 10.62, which is rolling out globally. Interestingly enough, the compass never disappeared from the iOS version of Google Maps, so iPhone users can carry on using it as they always have.
When Google originally removed the compass in early 2019, it said it did so to “clean up the navigation screen.” The irony of all this is that the company didn’t do something similar on iOS. Over on the iPhone and iPad, the compass been there the entire time its Android counterpart has been missing in action.
