Google Maps allows you to download offline maps to navigate without an internet connection. However, mapping data takes up a significant amount of space. If you have an Android phone with a microSD card slot, you can change the default storage location of your offline maps to save your phone’s internal storage.
How to Save Offline Maps to an SD Card
To use this feature, your microSD card must be configured as portable storage on your Android device (not formatted as internal storage). If your SD card is ready, follow these steps to change the download preference in Google Maps.
- Open the Google Maps app on your Android device.
- Tap on your profile picture or initial in the top right corner of the search bar.
- Select Offline maps from the menu.
- Tap the gear icon (Settings) located in the top right corner of the screen.
- Under the “Storage preferences” section, tap on Device.
- A pop-up menu will appear asking where you want to store offline maps. Select SD card and tap Save.
From now on, whenever you download a new offline map area, it will be automatically saved directly to your microSD card. Any existing offline maps that were previously saved to your internal storage will automatically be migrated to the SD card.
What Happens If You Remove the SD Card?
If you remove the SD card from your phone, your downloaded maps will temporarily become unavailable. Google Maps will revert back to downloading new offline maps to your internal storage. If you reinsert the SD card later, you must go back into the offline maps settings and re-select “SD card” to access the data again.