Cool Google Maps Features

Cool Google Maps Features
Easy personalisation of recommended places

Google Maps is one of the most used navigational apps and for good reason! There are consistent updates, ensuring the maps are up to date as well as adding new features to improve the user experience. This will cover some older features that you may already be aware of but also introduce some newer, incredibly useful ones!

Set Dietary Requirements
This is for when you’re searching for restaurants or cafes. You can set your specific dietary requirements, whether be vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free or for any religious reason. To set dietary requirements:

1. Click on your profile icon
2. Choose Settings –> Manage Preferences –> Dietary
3. From here, select your dietary requirements and tap Update Preferences

These preferences will influence the order of results that Google Maps shows you. An important note is that not all businesses may have updated this information with Google Maps so you won’t always get perfect results.

Accessibility of a Place
This option will inform you if a place is wheelchair-accessible and if so, which specific features are accessible. To toggle this:

1. Click on your profile icon
2. Choose Settings –> Accessibility Settings –> toggle Accessible places on

When you view a business or place, there will be a little wheelchair icon that shows up if there are accessible features. If there aren’t any, this icon will have a line through it. If there is no icon, that means the business has not updated this information.

If you want a more detailed description of which features are accessible, select the About option and scroll down to the Accessibility section. This will show which features are present or not present eg. if there is a wheelchair-accessible entrance or seating.

The About Section
Once you have decided where to go, you’ll be given more information about the place you’re going to. This will be under Overview, but if you want more information there’ll be options for Reviews, Photos, Updates, Menu (if there is one), and the handy About section.

I find that the About section is the most useful. It’ll first have the address, opening hours, and any links the business provides. If you keep scrolling down, you’ll find specific information like Service options (if it offers Delivery, In-Store Shopping etc.), payment types that are accepted, amenities, and some places even have information about the atmosphere or general crowd.

This section is super useful to get an idea about where you’re going and what to expect.

Share Live Location with Others
This is great for letting people know how far away you are or for safety reasons. To share your live location follow these steps:

1. Click on your profile picture
2. Select Location Sharing
3. The next screen will tell you how it works. To continue click New Share (may also show up as Share my location)
4. From here, you’ll be able to select how long to share your location. It will automatically be set for one hour.
5. After setting the share time, tap the profiles of those you’d like to share with. If a name doesn’t show up, click more and it will bring up your phone contacts as sharing options.
6. Click Share

Once this is done, the person/people that you have shared with will be able to view your live location for the duration of the time limit set. If you want to stop sharing before this time limit ends, go to Location Sharing and click the Settings cog icon. This will take you to a webpage where you can stop sharing your location.

Hopefully these features will help Improve your Google Maps experience! There’s so many more that were not mentioned here so I’d recommend playing around with settings and seeing what works best for you.