Google Maps is not just maps and navigation: here are some of its underestimated potentials

Let’s go back to dealing with Google Mapsone of the most popular and appreciated apps for maps and navigation on mobile (both for Android and for iOS) and not, as well as one of the services to which Google cares most.

Often the app is used only to look for certain places or for navigation but, in reality, if exploited to the maximum of its potential, it can be a complete and full of useful (but underestimated) functional tools. Let’s find out some of them.

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Six Google Maps functions that are often underestimated

Raise your hand those who do not use (or almost) Google Maps daily, an ally indispensable in the moments when we need to look for a place, nearby and not, in the moments when we have to move from a place to a place B, in the moments when we must orient ourselves in the city and places that we do not know.

In short. This is the ABC of one of the most appreciated and used services of the Mountain View giant. The features (and potential) available within the app are many and, often, some are underestimated or, even, are unknown (of course, not for everyone).

#1 Immersive View of the places thanks to Street View

When we have to visit a place for the first time or remember what we have seen during our experience there, a very useful tool of Google Maps is the immersive preview, a function that offers the 3D view of buildings, reference points and other places of interest. This is possible by combining Street View data and aerial images to create a 3D model of the “world” and provide a more detailed possible preview.

In addition to showing us the place in 3D, allowing us to wander around it, this feature also allows you to “travel through time” to see perhaps how the situation will evolve with the weather and to see the passage of the day/night period. Through the connection Street View We can then move on to the classic view that allows us to “visit” the place from outside.

#2 real -time info on how crowded the places are crowded

When we have to reach places for travel or tourist destinations, Google Maps comes to meet us by providing us with various information such as the opening hours, the next departures (for example in the case of train stations), various possibilities to buy tickets and contact details.

In addition to this information, scrolling through the information sheet of a place, we will be able to meet the data onCrowding index of the place itself, a column graph that highlights the top times and allows us to discover the degree of crowding when we are looking for the search. In addition to the data on how crowded the places are, Google Maps also shows in real time the level of crowding of buses and trains in some cities.

This tool can come in handy, for example, when we have to understand how much to arrive in advance for the departure of a train, when we have to choose which place to visit first among the most opportunities that present themselves on a trip or when we have to choose the right time to go to a restaurant.

#3 Turn-by-Turn navigation also inside the buildings

Google Maps is very useful when we have to move on foot, with public transport or by car from a point A to a point B. Not everyone knows that, in addition to classic Outdoor navigation, the app is able to guide us also within some places, especially in shopping centers.

By activating navigation inside a shopping center, we will be able to easily reach the shop we are looking for, avoiding having to wander without a destination and saving precious time. The function is also useful when we are looking for a restaurant inside a shopping center, providing the menus and expected price range.

Shopping centers are not the only places map Inside Google Maps: some airports, for example, also allow navigation indoor; This can come very useful especially when we are far from home, perhaps in a boundless airport of a few world megalopolis, to find the nearest bathroom, the right gate or the shop/restaurant that is right for us.

#4 CHRONOLOGY OF MOVEMENTS

In some ways it could pass as a sort of stalking but for some, especially for those who are dismeurated like me, the Chronology of movements It can be very useful to retrace the places we visited on a certain date (even the day before in my case).

For those who travel often, however, this function can represent a sort of On -board diary which contains all the stages of the trip. It collects the data of the movements made by the user (as precise as possible) and keeps them on the device and then view them inside the app, allowing us to find out what we had done today last year or in which restaurant we had eaten an unforgettable dish.

To use the Chronology of movementsjust make a tap on the Avatar of our Google account, select “Moving”enable the functionality and start collecting information for our “time trips”.

#5 “Local Guide” program and contributions from the community

In addition to being a service that can count on a database and on a dataset put together by the team dedicated to the Mountain View giant, Google Maps boasts a huge contribution from a continuously expanding community.

Users can contribute through the program Local Guide And, for example, report changes to the opening hours of a shop or a point of interest, report when an activity has closed definitively or report incorrect information and propose corrections.

The “guides” can do even more by writing reviews, loading contributions (photos and videos) that highlight strengths (or weakness) of the point of interest or, simply, by telling their experience to help other users decide whether that place does it or not.

The program Local Guide It provides for a sort of “points collection” that earn with the various contributions, a sort of game set up by Big G but which at the same time serves to give credibility to the “guide” itself: climbing up with the scores, the “guides” can also be invited to exclusive events and receive awards from the Community. To begin with, just select the tab “Public” in the Google Maps app.

#6 Sharing the position in real time

We close the review with another very useful functionality integrated in Google Maps, namely the Sharing of the position in real time: it allows trivial To share our position “in real time” with friends and family for a period of time that can be personalized, so that friends and family will always know where we are in that period of time.

This function, in addition to returning useful to make friends and family people feel very useful also in group trips, so that the group leader can keep track of everyone’s position and trace those who have lost in case of loss.

Activate the Sharing of the position in real time It’s very simple: just access the app, make a tap on our Google account avatar and select “Location sharing”. From the dedicated section, just make a tap on “Share position”give access to contacts and customize the duration (a minimum of an hour, but can be increased in one hour shots, or opt for manual deactivation) before choosing the contact to which (or the app through) to share the location.

How to download or update Google Maps

In any case, in order not to risk losing the latest news coming up Google Mapsincluding this small change to the user interface that is under gradual distribution, just update (or download) the app via the Google Play Store, looking for the app or reaching the dedicated page via the badge below.

If you are interested in trying previewed the news that will arrive in the future within Google Maps, you can participate in the Beta App program (reachable via this link) or, if the program should be fully, proceed with the download and manual installation of the APK files of the latest beta versions available from the portal Apkmirror (page reachable at this link).