Hidden Features of Google Maps That You Should Know
Google Maps is efficient to do more than just show you locations, navigation routes, real-time traffic congestion, act as a translator, and be your driving assistant. That’s right! It has more features than we knew apart from offering satellite imagery, aerial photos of monuments and well-known places, street maps, street views, etc.
Some of the exclusive features of Google Maps are highlighted below for you to explore.
Best Hidden Features of Google Maps:
1.) Incognito Mode
This is the recently introduced feature in Android and iOS devices which have been brought out with the purpose of protecting the privacy of people’s commuting details who prefer to keep it that way. The technique remains the same as the Chrome browser, where you can switch to the incognito mode by choosing it from the dropdown menu of the profile section of the Google Maps app.
The benefit of this feature is that once this mode is on, it will no longer track the information of visited locations on the Timeline. It will also not record the search history on your Google account or recommend places based on the previously available historical data.
Apart from this, they have also incorporated the auto-delete option which can enable you to retain the location data of a specific period as per your choice.
2.) Messages
This facility is available for select businesses that have kept the messaging option turned on. Users can directly message them if they wish to enquire about something.
Users can opt for messaging by exploring the suggested list of places. Supposing you have a query with a restaurant, then tap the “restaurants” icon available on the top section of your map screen and then select your restaurant.
You can type your queries or message and send them across to the respective business. Once they respond, it will become a part of the message thread. A new message will be indicated on the message icon with a red dot. To view your messages, you can go to the message section in the application and tap on the menu, followed by going to messages.
If you want to block a business from spamming your message section or report a business due to inappropriate behavior, then you can open the message conversation and tap on “more” to choose the “block/report spam” option.
Further, you can also delete a conversation by opening the message and then go to the “more” option to choose the “delete” option.
3.) Speedometer
This feature functions by displaying the actual speed of the vehicle and highly resembles the speedometer of your car or bike. The attractive thing about Google Maps speedometer is that it can indicate when a vehicle is crossing its speed limit by changing the color.
Create a list of favorite places
You can open the list of Google Maps app to add a list of favorite places in it by tapping on the menu segment, then clicking on the visited areas and further the saved ones. Once you have saved the location, look towards the bottom right and tap on “add”. You can update the name of the place, along with a brief description of it in 4000 characters.
With the “share location” feature, you can send your real-time locations to selected people. There is also a “ride-share” feature to help share the in-transit information.
5.) Timeline
This feature of Google’s mapping service lets you manage the location information history. You can also view the location history from this section and delete the data as well. This feature is privately available only to the user.
Read Also: How To Use Google Maps And Get Traffic Updates
6.) Street Light Availability
Google is reportedly engaged in developing another challenging feature that can immensely help those who need to head out at the dead of the night. According to reports, they are working towards the “lighting” feature that can indicate the availability of street lights on a particular road or path.
It will function by highlighting roads that are brightly lit with a yellow colored indicator and thereby help users to avoid streets in considerable darkness. Thus, this feature can possibly help in the reduction of unfortunate mishaps.
Thus, the awareness of the concealed features of Google Maps will enable you to use the web mapping service more efficiently for multiple purposes.
