Navigate by Text Msg: SMS2NAV

Brand New App - Buy and Try? - (See refund policy below)

Wouldn't it be great if someone else could set your Sat Nav remotely while you keep driving? Now they can! Just ask your office, boss, customer, client or friend to send you a text message and your Sat Nav will start up and set your destination without you having to lift a finger!

The text needed is very simple: It must start with the word 'SATNAV' in upper case, followed by a space, with the remainder of the message being the destination. Google Navigation will start up and set itself to navigate to the requested location.

That destination can be an address, a town, a city, a postcode or a zipcode, lat/long, in fact anything that Google Navigation will recognise as a location. Don't add anything else to the message, just the destination. Here are some examples...

SATNAV Charing Cross Station London
SATNAV 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500
SATNAV 51.502059,-0.140097
SATNAV SW1A 2AA

This is very useful for anyone who travels for work whose office might want to direct them... salespeople, engineers, taxi drivers, couriers, lorry drivers. Or maybe your partner gets lost sometimes? Load this on their phone and they can call you to look up some directions without needing to pull off the road. By avoiding just a couple of minutes of driving in the wrong direction this app could have paid for itself!


Usage Notes:

The voice engine used is Pico TTS. This should be the default setting for the correct voice speed in the start up announcement when a destination loads.

Take care when navigating from remotely loaded instructions. It's always a good idea to double check the travel time and also to zoom out and check the route looks right. That's good advice anytime, but especially when someone else has sent the destination to you! You will also hear a voice notification anytime a new Destination is received, even if you are on the phone. The developer cannot be held responsible for the consequences of any misdirection, so please ensure your sender is giving the correct destination in the text message.

Note this App has no interface, it runs as a service from startup so there is zero distraction from driving. But you can add its Icon from the 'Applications' list if you like. Clicking the Icon will reload its most recent destination into Google Navigation. All Destinations set will also appear as normal in the 'Recent Destinations' list in the Google Navigation screen that will show if you start it manually. That list can also be found by clicking 'More', 'Set Destination' from the map screen. If you receive several directions you can choose the one you want from that menu.

Clicking the Icon will also restart the service if you've stopped it, though there's probably no reason to as it consumes few resources. (To Stop: Settings, Applications, Running Services) It will also restart after a reboot.
Once you’ve bought it, you can uninstall it and it can be reinstalled from the Google Play Store at a later date without any charge.

Permissions: Only to read the SMS messages to get any 'SATNAV' destination. It accesses nothing else and has no ads or internet access.

Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Pent's brilliant 'Tasker App Factory'.


Buy and Try - This app should work well, but it's new so please don't give negative feedback if it doesn't work on your phone, just send an email? Positive feedback is welcome of course!
Google policy allows just 15 mins after purchase to uninstall and request a refund. That's not long, but you'll only need a couple of minutes to load the app and send yourself a text to check that Google Navigation starts up correctly. Here's Google's return policy instructions:

Launch the Google Play Store app on your device
Select Menu > My Apps
Select the app you'd like to return
If the 15 minute refund window has not yet passed, the app is eligible for return and will have two buttons saying Open or Refund
Select the Refund option