maps disappeared with update

[John Bealle]

All of my maps are gone, they were there earlier in the day. I suppose this is related to today's update and the change to move custom maps to private storage. I can see all of the kmz files in "Internal Memory > CustomMaps" -- is that where they belong? Do I need to do anything or will they be moved automatically?

Basically when I open the app, it says "No maps found on SD card in CustomMaps folder." But they are there, I can see them with the file browser.

- John

[Marko Teittinen]

The latest Custom Maps version (1.8.1) should have copied all maps from the CustomMaps folder into the phone's internal memory when it started up the first time. After that point, Custom Maps uses only the maps in the internal memory. This change was required by Play Store which no longer allows apps to read/write the public area of the SD card unless the app is a file management app. Custom Maps obviously is not, so I had to move the maps to the internal memory area reserved for the app.

You could "Force stop" the Custom Maps app and relaunch it, and the maps might appear in the list. If they don't, rebooting the phone might help.

If neither of those actions help, you can open the kmz files in CustomMaps folder one by one through a file manager app like Google Files. In Google Files you open the files simply by tapping on them. If you have other apps installed that can display kmz files, the app may ask you which app you want to use.

Sorry about the trouble. This never happened when I was testing the new version.

Marko Teittinen

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[John Bealle]

Thank you, this information is so helpful! I did figure out that I could open kmz files with Custom Maps and that they would then appear in the map list in the app. I have also created a new map and noticed that it was not saved in the old CustomMaps folder. Also I notice that if I modify a map the timestamp in the CustomMaps folder remains unchanged. So I see that everything is working correctly.

After I open all the maps in the CustomMaps folder and see that they have been moved and appear in the list in the app, I will delete the CustomMaps folder and all of its contents. No reason to keep that, I imagine.

I did try restarting the phone, deleting the cache, and reinstalling the app but none of those triggered the move to internal storage. No worries, all is well now and apparently no one else had this problem.

Thanks again!

- John

[Marko Teittinen]

John,

You are right. After all the maps have been moved to internal storage, there is no need to keep the CustomMaps folder around. BTW, CustomMaps can now open kmz files selected in the Google Drive app. So you can create your map collection in Google Maps, so they are easily opened on any device, and when you switch phones.

Marko Teittinen