GoogleMap interaction best practices

This page explains best practices for interacting with the GoogleMap object in your app.

Implement GoogleMap features on a separate maps instance from navigation experiences

Maps APIs are also available as part of Navigation SDK, which you can use to build map specific (non-navigation) experiences.If your app includes both a non-navigation map experience and a navigation experience, we recommend using the Maps API on a separate map instance, rather than combining the experience onto the NavigationView or SupportNavigationFragment.

Use getMapAsync to obtain the GoogleMap instance

You can obtain a GoogleMap object using either SupportNavigationFragment#getMapAsync or NavigationView#getMapAsync. We recommend this method over holding onto the GoogleMap instance that might become stale once the NavigationView underneath is recreated.

Also be sure to clean up the GoogleMap retrieved from this method after it is no longer needed. For more information, see Instance cleanup best practices.