Build 18: sixteen fixes, and a map you can read

The biggest batch yet, and almost all of it came from two days of your emails. Larger text and colour-blind-safe route colours, directions that read the way the voice sounds, and a long list of things that were quietly wrong.

This is the largest single build since the beta opened, and I can take credit for almost none of it. Two days of email did this.

New: easier to read

Two settings, under a new "Easier to read" section.

Larger text raises the size of the directions, the times and the street names on the map itself. Several of you asked, and one note stuck with me: a tester's husband could not read the instruction panel at arm's length in a dash mount.

Colour-blind friendly colours changes the route to blue, slow traffic to orange and stopped traffic to a dark navy, so nothing on screen depends on telling red from green. If you cannot distinguish the traffic colours today, turn this on.

New: the road first, then the sign

The instruction panel used to give the road and the whole list of sign destinations at one size, so a long official name filled the panel and shrank everything. Now the road is printed large and the "toward" destinations sit under it, smaller. On a highway that is the difference between reading the panel and squinting at it.

New: tap the ferry label to avoid ferries

If a route is offered with a ferry on it, the amber Ferry badge is now a button. Tap it and the route is recalculated on roads, with an undo if that was not what you wanted.

New: hide the Work slot

Not everyone commutes. If you have not set a Work address, you can now switch the slot off entirely and keep Home and your own saved places.

New: a traffic legend

The colours along your route now explain themselves in Settings: green is moving, yellow is slow, red is stopped, and a hatched red stretch is closed.

Fixed: the directions read the way the voice sounds

The screen showed "16 AV NW" while the voice said "16 Avenue Northwest". They now agree, because both go through the same expansion. Along the way I found something that had been wrong in every build: an ordering bug left "101 St NW" as "101 St Northwest", and the voice was reading that leftover "St" as "Saint". Numbered streets are also spelled out mid-sentence now, so the arrival line says "49 Street" and not "49 St".

TomTom calls Highway 2 "Alberta Provincial Highway 2 S". Its number wins now, which shortens the panel and stops the route list wrapping onto two lines.

Fixed

Arriving. Stopped within 120 m of the pin, or right beside it, now ends the trip, and nothing reroutes within 200 m of the end. A tester in Rivière-Beaudette had the app asking him to turn onto the next street while he sat in his own driveway.
"Keep left" at every interchange. A lane split with no exit number and no sign asks nothing of the driver, so it is no longer announced. Two prompts in three minutes while simply staying on the 404 is what prompted this.
Your music comes back. On Android the app now asks for audio focus properly, so other apps duck for the prompt and return afterwards.
The speed and distance were behind you. Both are now projected forward from your last GPS fix, so "45 m to the turn" does not appear while you are already through it.
One shop, one result. Search folded "Bosleys" and "Bosley's" at the same address into two rows. Results with the same name within 60 m are now one.
Search errors in plain words. A failed search used to show the raw upstream error. It now says the search did not answer, and tries once more on its own.
"GO station" finds the station. The map does not know what GO means, so the app no longer asks it to.
The label field behind the keyboard. Naming a saved place on iPhone put the text field under the keyboard, so you could not see what you typed.
The map after End. Ending a trip could leave the map framed on somewhere else entirely, once across a strait. It now settles back on the route.
Two routes that were the same route. Alternatives within 20 m and 15 seconds of each other are no longer offered twice, one of them nameless.
Badges clipped on narrow phones. A "Ferry 5 km" badge beside a long arrival time ran off the right edge.
The locate and reroute buttons say something. Both used to do nothing visible when there was nothing to change. Locate confirms it has centred on you; reroute says whether it found a faster way or the same one.
Follow-me through the start of a trip. The camera could drop out of following in the first seconds and stay out.
A quieter reroute on traffic. The route is refreshed every five minutes and keeps the road you chose, without announcing itself unless something changed.
Arnprior. The voice now says it the way people from Arnprior say it.

Also new on the site

The independent-shop list has grown, the leaf list is at 588 brands, and there is a new article about where your data actually goes: what we keep, what leaves the country and why, and the one gap I have not closed yet. The beta survey has four new questions that decide how far this project goes on Canadian ground.