What's changed in 0.4.1912
- Route chooser minimizes to a one-line bar, sea names follow your language, list pins match place icons, road name no longer clipped in the bar
- Google's much shorter walk and unmatched Google drives get street names from the map instead of detours
- Walking directions come from the open router alone, without Google's route or the snap that added detours
- The nav trace export names the Vela build and device and lists why each route change happened
- Picking one of Google's routes no longer turns it into a loop or an out-and-back detour
- The map opens where you are instead of flying in, and a far jump in location moves the map at once
- Offline maps can live on an SD card, with a move between internal storage and the card
- Short Google Maps links and maps.google.com links offer Vela again, and Settings shows whether Android sends them here
- Addresses and dropped pins no longer show a Reviews tab or the popular times placeholder
- Update on a downloaded region takes the patch whatever the auto-update setting
- Map bake patches against the archive it replaces, not the one it just uploaded
- Map region rebakes publish patches, so a downloaded map updates without a full download
- Compass tap during navigation re-centers when the map was panned away, so the north-up switch shows
- Fix places bakes failing on Overture's new category taxonomy; region patches also check on reconnect and every few hours
- Business updates get their own tab, and the nav icon can be a UFO, pirate ship or rubber duck
- Focus rings on the update text and the place source link
- Choose a car instead of the arrow for the navigation icon (#611)
- Option to start every drive north-up (#612)
- Place pages show the business's own updates, and All reviews is a full-width button again
- Place pages hold still while they load, with options to load photos on tap and skip popular-times retries
- Reviews tab gets sort and search chips and the star breakdown, and place pages get a Photos tab
- Place pages get an Overview tab with pinned tabs and a review summary
- Place pages open on the About tab
- Translate the on-tap review and traffic options
- Options to load reviews and route traffic only when tapped
- Bake regions as grid cells for partial offline downloads
- Stop boards fetch every merged stop's departures in parallel
- Health probe retries the photo request once, like the app
- Place details show hours and contact info from the first reply instead of after every retry
- Offline, a downloaded region's map is used whenever its roads reach the screen, not the world map
- A downloaded map stays up on a connection that has no real internet, instead of going gray
- Updating a downloaded region shows its progress in Settings even when only the places or the map change
- Download an area by framing it on the map, like Google Maps, at full street detail with the size shown as you go
- The picture-in-picture mini map shows time left and arrival, and street-name bubbles no longer cover cameras
- Reviews load when you scroll to them instead of on every place tap, cutting most of Vela's Google traffic
- Downloading the area on screen shows its size first, and the whole region around it is now a choice
- Settings shows how many requests Vela sends to Google, and place photos are fetched like a browser fetches them
- Requests to Google no longer carry values every copy of Vela sent identically
- Build: move to Android Gradle Plugin 9.4, Gradle 9.8 and Kotlin 2.4
- Vela's connection to Google now runs on the Cronet from current Chrome (155) instead of a year-old one
- Requests to Google match a real Chrome more closely: one language setting across the app and its web pages, live network hints, and complete headers on proxied page loads
- Google's web pages send nothing from the in-app browser when the proxy is on, preflights and binary uploads included
- Vela identifies as Chrome 155 to Google, the current stable
- Every language is caught up with English again
- Cleanup: bake fixes, a dead branch, stale comments and SPEC numbers
- Downloaded regions update themselves on Wi-Fi by default, and trip logs name a jam snap
- Docs audit: every page checked against the code, plus the bugs it turned up
- The "how busy right now" line under popular times is translated
- Google's page telemetry goes out by default, and blocking it is a setting
- Vela says when Google is giving it a limited view
- No colored strip behind the arrow when pausing or resuming a drive
- Passed street bubbles ride down to the bottom bar before fading
- Street-name bubbles stay until you pass them, then fade out
- Drives can remove the next stop, and every drive shows Edit route
- Navigation with a route up and the car parked stops redrawing the map, so the phone no longer runs hot, and a U-turn step no longer reads Bear uturn
- Manhattan and other dense cities stay smooth when zoomed in close, with no calibration update needed
- Offline search results and place pages show the city, state and ZIP when OpenStreetMap only tagged the street
- The route line no longer flickers when traffic refreshes, the road name stays up on ramps, plate cameras sit beside stoplights instead of on them, and a faster route chimes before it is offered
- A region with no place pack or places file published counts as fully downloaded instead of partly
- A region download keeps its progress card up until the map itself is in, says ready only then, and the Offline maps page lists downloaded regions with no signal
- Settings > Privacy starts a new Google session every week, every day or every time Vela opens, so what Google can link stays short
- Fresh installs keep Google's consent cookies on the long-running session, so EU users are not sent to the consent page
- Popular times show again on busy places: place details, photos and reviews use the WebView's long-running Google session
- The updater picks the APK for your phone's chip type, ready for smaller per-chip downloads
- Google requests use Chrome's own network stack on ARM phones, and emulators keep working on the old one
- Vela talks to Google through Chrome's own network stack, so its connections look like Chrome's instead of a Java library's
- Reviews stay on the page that keeps Google's full list, and the reviews page no longer throws away a working session
- The OpenStreetMap shops switch is gone now that the places data includes them, and hiding parks and civic places works on Vela's own places too
- Popular times and More photos come from plain requests too, so opening a place normally loads no Google page at all
- Places remember their photos and reviews for a few hours, the review list can load its next page, and each new Google method has a remote off switch
- Review and photo requests retry once in a fresh Google session instead of falling back to a page load
- Opening a place asks Google for its photos and reviews in one request each instead of loading Google's web app
- Opening a place loads its first photos and reviews instead of everything, and More photos gets the rest
- Google requests describe a real desktop window, picked once per install, instead of the same 1024x768 for everyone
- Famous landmarks show from farther out: the places bake counts how many languages a place is named in
- Vela claims Chrome 154 to Google, with the client hints Chrome 154 actually sends
- Vela now claims Chrome 154, with the exact client hints that release sends
- Full reviews page retries on a fresh session when Google's limited view stops More reviews, and the log says so
- Timed requests to Google get a random spread, and a daily check watches Google's answers and the Chrome version Vela claims
- Switching places to Google no longer hides the map's parks and temples
- Parks, museums, temples and other landmarks now come from Vela's own places, so the map draws one set of points instead of two
- Settings has a Performance page: load voice search at startup (on for roomy phones) and compatibility rendering
- One set of map points: parks, temples, schools and museums come from the places bake, and the basemap's own copy hides over it
- Vela uses half the memory right after launch: the speech model, the voice and Google's pages load when you reach for them
- Bus stop icons wait one zoom step closer, so busy downtowns are not carpeted with them
- Bus stops published by several transit feeds show as one stop instead of a pile of icons
- Dense cities draw fewer place icons when zoomed out, ranked by how many sources agree, with food above offices
- English names on the map in Japan and other non-Latin countries, and no more duplicate shop pins there
- A name typed while looking at another city also finds the place near you
- Version notes in the app leave out changes that only touch documentation or code comments
- Shops sit on the OpenStreetMap pin whenever the names match, not only between 30 and 120 m
- Smoother first seconds after launch: the speech model and voice load in the background
- Shared Google Maps links open the place, and Use Vela without Google can refuse them
- Fix six places where the code and the docs disagreed
- Update downloaded regions applies patches on its own, and Update no longer deletes the region before re-downloading it
- Car search reads the downloaded place packs when there is no signal
- Transit places with no Google listing get their departure board, including every tap with Google off
- With an avoid on, the open router's unrestricted alternates are no longer offered beside the avoiding route
- Monthly place-pack and road-feature bakes, and the quarterly speed-limit bake, run the catalog in two halves under the 256-job cap
- Search field keeps the fill-in cursor at the end, offline search fills the addresses it shows, and the places manifest repair re-lists correctly
- Open-data places carry their city, state and ZIP, and a chain locator's hours survive the dedupe
- Manifest merges retry a lost upload race instead of failing the run
- Tap links check the house number, open-data hours convert for nearly every listing, and the places bake keeps OpenStreetMap's hours
- Tap resolve: far name matches no longer block the listing on the spot, and the sheet says where an unlinked place comes from
- Tap resolve asks for one page of results, and the sheet shows the map's own data while Google loads
- Tapped places: a loading sheet that updates in place, fuel stations no longer take the transit path, and a site-named row finds the listing of its kind beside the building
- Car search: autocomplete while typing, the full search only on submit, and real cancellation
- The fill-in arrow puts only the row's primary text in the search box
- Search suggestions from Google's own autocomplete, a fill-in arrow on every row, and a typed address geocodes on Enter
- Fix house numbers vanishing in Germany and the Netherlands: Alaska's antimeridian box covered the whole latitude band (#257)
- Build under another package name with -PappId, for the Android Auto ownership experiment
- Car screens: icon-only action strips, the badge in the stable area, category markers on the along-route rows
- Car map: apply the palette from the first snapshot, since the style observer never fires
- Car map follows the phone's theme choice and draws the puck an eighth of the screen wide
- Car map: the palette gets the style's layer list and logs whether it applied; attribution matches the phone
- Car map: re-theme on day/night, the Vela puck, the speed badge inside the visible area
- The places manifest repair treats an archive re-uploaded since its rev as changed, not only one whose size moved
- Fix the quoting in the places manifest repair that broke on an empty row
- The places manifest is derived from the release, and the bake merges no longer cancel each other
- Define the repo root the places bake reads its generic-word list from; 54 US bakes died on the unbound variable
- Offline maps opens without the stall, and the region filter keeps its results in view
- Online, a downloaded map is used only while the whole view is inside it
- Offline, keep the downloaded map mounted while any of the view is still inside it
- The canary release is recreated on every push so it sits at the top of the list, named after its build
- Offline maps as one list: what is downloaded, then countries A to Z
- One browser identity for the hidden WebViews, and the compiled Chrome version back on stable
- Update checks stop downloading the data releases' asset lists
- Match Europe's four-letter brands, glued names and cross-script taps
- Same-business rule for every app language, and for names written without spaces
- Places bake pulls the newest AllThePlaces run instead of a fixed one
- Places bake folds the variant family with the app's generic word list; a bigger generic list
- Same-business rule, city pass: brand prefixes, phrases, plurals, street words, and the neighborhood as generic
- Fix the build: the ambient marker carries its house number for the fuel-lot rule
- Android Auto round three: pause, search along the route, alert toasts, the road you are on, overview, corridor glyphs
- Same-business rule takes kinds: a fuel lot is one station, an overlap across kinds is two businesses
- Android Auto: Vela's map theme, one OSM credit, the puck framed in view, a smooth glide and Vela's voice
- One same-business rule for taps, Both-mode twins and the places bake
- Stop reloading the map style while panning along a downloaded region's border
- Paused drives draw the route lavender, offline turns on divided roads, car puck size setting, offline search without the bus stops
- Offline boards and addresses, resume from a fresh fix, quieter offline turns, car puck, music lead, closed listings, nightly titles
- Add a "Use Vela without Google" switch that keeps every Google request off
- Delete all offline data in one tap, and give the space back when an area is deleted
- Try side streets around plate cameras when every route still passes them
- Ask Google for the trip through your stops, not just the direct one
- Add Hong Kong, Macau and every Chinese province to the offline list
- Pick the region a place is in by its real border, not its bounding box
- Keep the street name bubbles off the blue line, and the compass out from under the nav buttons
- Give Traditional Chinese readers place names in their own script
- Print the street names hint the way it was written
- Stop saying the street name in the three places that ignored the switch
Full changelog: v0.4.1733...v0.4.1912