I wish 7 cool Google Maps features that can make your life easier

05/06/2022 – Whatever anyone says, it is an undeniable fact that Google currently has the best and most diverse mapping apps out there. Since its launch in 2005, Google Maps has in fact become an unavoidable part of our daily lives, thanks mostly to its ever-growing useful functionality.

Of course, users are also very grateful for this. The map application can be used not only to search for specific places and routes, but also to check the opening hours of shops. Thanks to Street View, we can explore neighborhoods without having to travel there in person, but we can also visit buildings and landmarks with it.

The average user uses Google Maps for these things, which may be more than enough, but at the same time, it has many other functions that make our lives much better and easier. I’ve collected seven of these that I personally thought might be particularly useful.

1. One-handed zoom

While zooming with one hand isn’t a great trick, it can be especially useful if you’re exploring a location with a bag in your hand. It’s a relatively simple “swipe tap”, you don’t need to add anything else to it, just tap twice quickly on the screen, then put your finger on it and drag it back and forth to zoom in and out as you like.

2. Worried parents and children who are always late

If you’re a worried parent, or if you have a boyfriend who’s always late everywhere like me, but don’t want to constantly worry about when he’ll get to the meeting—or, in the case of the ex, when he’ll get home from the party, you’ll be very happy with this job—although you might already know that.

This feature is Situation Sharing, which the party on the road has to set up, but luckily, it’s not atomic physics, and it’s just a few button presses away. This can be done in two ways: by clicking on the profile picture displayed in the search bar of the map application, it can also be selected from the drop-down menu bar as “Share Location”, but it can also be quickly selected by clicking on the current position, here the “Share Location” button is highlighted in blue.

Posture can be customized in many ways and can be shared in many ways. We can set a time period for how long the specific situation is visible to the other party, which can also be shared as a link in most other applications (such as Messenger).

3. Remember where you parked!

One of the coolest features for those who tend to forget where they parked their bike. Don’t worry, Google is your friend in every situation, and also now. After you park your car, open the app and tap on your location marked with a blue dot. A menu bar appears here, which starts with Share Space above, but if you drag it to the side you can actually see Save Parking Space. Just push it and watch a miracle, it will park there.

4. Customizable vehicles

And if it comes to parking, it’s worth continuing with an easter egg-like function that affects other vehicles. Did you know, for example, that you can exchange an otrom stock for a car of your choice? Well, if not, now you know, and you don’t even need to do a lot of tricks. After you choose your car route, just click on the arrow and it will show you the options you can exchange it for. I think it’s very cool.

5. Several destinations at the same time

This will be useful for those who want to go to several completely different places in one day, but do not want to look for separate routes. To do this, select or search for your first destination, click on your itinerary, and then on the three dots next to the Location column that appears above. From the drop-down menu, select “Add station”, after which you can add almost as many additional places to your route. don’t be shy.

6. Shop

And when it comes to how to get around, it might be worth noting that these aren’t the only options on Google Maps. One option to choose is the waving style of grabbing your luggage, which is specifically representative of taxi rides. If we open this, it shows the company in partnership with Google, whose nearby cars are shown instantly, and it also shows approximately how much it would cost to get us from A to B and the time it would take a taxi to get to us.

However, at the moment – as I have experienced – the Bolt only works with it, and we can only order a car if their app is also downloaded to our mobile phone – but we can switch to it immediately from the map.

7. Bigman Easter eggs

Well, this isn’t exactly a useful feature, but at least it’s funny. You may not know, but the yellow number that originally helped Street View is called the Guide, and it has more secrets than you might think.

In most cases, Pegman is a completely normal yellow crab, but if you drag your cursor over a famous building or place, it will change its clothes accordingly. At Buckingham Palace in London, for example, it turns into a mockery of the Queen, but if you put it in Loch Ness, it turns into a sea monster, and if you put it in Area 51, it turns into a UFO.

Which do you use more?

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