It might be my imagination, but I thought Google Maps used to show Taiwanese street-names in both traditional characters and pinyin. I looked today and the pinyin seems largely to have disappeared. This seems a shame, though perhaps it wasn’t as useful to other people as it was to me.
Or maybe it was never there and I imagined the whole thing? I am getting older…
I just checked and most of it is gone.
I scrolled randomly and saw that Chang Chun Rd and Keelung Rd in Taipei were still ping ying, most of the other major roads and small alleys have been changed to Chinese.
Does this have anything to do with what your Google region is set to?
That was my first thought, but changing it hasn’t made any difference.
No doubt they have their reasons for this development. Maybe it was annoying to a lot of Taiwanese people? I’d like to see the Pinyin come back; though it’s an incentive to improve my Chinese, so not all is lost.
My gf’s Google account is set to Taiwan or Chinese…what have you. She’s never had any ping ying show up on her maps.
Mine is set to English (US) and I’ve had half and half for the longest time. She would always get confused when using my phone for directions on the scooter because navigation would show the road names in ping ying.
Maybe worth leaving a message on Google forums?
Mine changed recently. A lot of Pinyin road names are gone. Probably part of their attempt to de-clutter.
Yes, that could well be the reason.
Confirmed, in English (Australia) environment on Android 7 
There’s also a Reddit thread: https://amp.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/81ppqf/google_maps_no_longer_showing_pinyin/
Alabado sea Dios.
I mean, Pinyin gone? shit, I thought it was the Chinese what was gone!
Now I’m lost for real!
You and me both, mate.
Maybe they are trying to force us to learn that language from Mordor…
I’m trying, I’m trying…
I just sent feedback via the app and sent the GoogleMaps account a tweet. Let’s see how we go.
Bing Maps is your friend.
I can do fine without the pinyin, but it really irked me when they “whited out” all the streets. I feel like I’m in a blizzard with almost zero visibility.
I didn’t know about pinyin on google maps. I use pinyin to select the traditional characters.
Visibility is much better on that map. Fcuk Google! Microsoft…who knew?
I used it on Okinawa last year since Google Maps didn’t have an offline map for Okinawa. It’s pretty good and they’ve made updates/improvements since then.