How to Use Google Maps Trip Planner (2024 Guide)
Jul. 30, 2024Google Maps is THE most comprehensive map service that millions around the globe use to get directions. Be it for traveling in the city, on road trips, or planning to go somewhere, Maps also hosts a trip planner that you can use to add all the potential places you want to visit during your trip. This makes it easier to efficiently plan and travel to those places without any hassle. In this guide, let’s look at how to use Google Maps trip planner to make traveling a breeze.
Create a Google Maps Trip Planner Map
Done booking the tickets and shortlisting the places you want to visit? All that’s remaining is to add them to the Google Maps trip planner one by one. However, let’s first start off with how to create a new Google MyMaps page.
The next step is adding locations. If you already have the locations you want to go to, you could search and add them to the map. However, you can also search right on the map thanks to Google Maps’s comprehensive and up-to-date location information. Here’s how to add multiple locations to your Map.
Adding locations is not the end, as Google Maps also has layers that you can create to store locations of different categories. You can have at most 10 layers. Here’s how to add them.
What all the styles mean:
Creating and adding locations could be a tedious process, but if you’ve already added them, we’re now in the fun part of trip planning, i.e., adding notes, measuring distance, adding directions to places, and customizing the colors of locations.
The maps trip planner lets you both search for locations and choose them on the map. The latter is what you’ll be doing most of the time. Here’s how to add directions as layers.
Customizing places on Maps trip planner can help you sort of add your own filters to better differentiate between places. For example, you can change the location pointer’s color for all eateries to yellow and all monuments to blue.
Maybe arrange them in a way that blue indicates you’re supposed to visit them on a particular day and yellow indicates you’ll visit them the next day. There are endless possibilities. Here’s how to customize map trip locations.
To change the color of the location pointers, all you need to do is click on one of the pointers >color bucket> choose a color and/or an icon. This way, you can have different colors and icons for different layers of the maps.
A good example would be if you change the colors of places you want to visit to Orange and all the eateries you want to visit to Blue. You can also change the individual pointer colors by selecting the “Individual styles” option.
You can rearrange the contents and places in a layer by dragging and dropping them above or below other places or layers, thereby eliminating the need to manually add or remove the locations.
If you prefer plotting on a satellite or terrain map, you can change the base map style by clicking on thedown arrow iconon the “Base map” section and choosing your preferred type of terrain. Maps such as Terrain, Satellite, and regular-styled ones are pretty good.
Once you’re done adding all the locations, it’s now time to share the completed map with your travel partner(s). All you need to do is click on theShareoption at the top > turn on theAnyone with this linktoggle > copy the link to share it with others.
The map once saved in Google Maps can be accessed on both your phone and PC. Here’s how to access it on your phone:
One of the best tips to never lose access to your map is todownload an offline mapof the area you’re visiting. This could not only help you keep using the maps without an internet connection but can also save your battery life.
And that’s how you can use Google Maps to plan your trips in advance and select all the locations you want to visit. What are your thoughts on this, and do you know better apps that can do the same thing? Let us know in the comments.
