Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I like utilizing Google Maps lists to bookmark my favourite and important spots. They’ve been extremely helpful whereas discovering Paris after my transfer right here, planning varied journeys, and retaining tabs on all of the cool spots all over the world that I hope to see at some point. However when you use lists as a lot as I do, you hit a brick wall: Nondescript blue dots all over the place in your map.
As I added an increasing number of locations to my completely different Paris and world lists, I seen they have been changing into ineffective general, particularly on the comparatively small display screen of my Android cellphone. Is that this dot a restaurant I’ve been to or one I need to go to? Is it a free backyard or a paid exhibition? A Lebanese restaurant or a retailer that sells Italian merchandise? All blue dots, all indistinguishable from one another.
Google Maps lists have been changing into indistinguishable blue dots littering your map view.
It received so dangerous that I began hiding and exhibiting lists on demand to have the ability to make sense of the insanity. And overlook about journey planning, I turned a frequent person of Wanderlog as a result of I might color-code and choose descriptive icons for every checklist in each journey in that app.
However Google Maps just lately rolled out a easy but implausible replace for each checklist power-user: emojis. Now you can assign an emoji icon to each Maps checklist by tapping Edit > Edit icon. That sounds ridiculous till you understand that it solves the checklist visibility downside altogether.
My bakeries received a 🥖 image, my meals shops a 🥫, and the pastry outlets a 🍰. I gave my favourite Spanish eating places the 🇪🇸 flag and the Lebanese ones a 🇱🇧 flag. The eating places and cafes I’ve noticed on Instagram and that I need to go to get a 🤤, the free Parisian spots to get pleasure from some nature or tradition are marked with a coin 🪙, and so forth.
Each interest, curiosity, or place has an emoji to depict it. Use them to make your lists simply distinguishable in your map.
Irrespective of your hobbies or pursuits, there ought to be an emoji for that. Gardens ⛲️, parks 🌲, museums 🎨, theatres 🎭, pubs 🍺, music venues 🎶, espresso outlets ☕️, working tracks 🏃, youngsters playgrounds 🛝, skate parks 🛹, gyms 🏋️, procuring departments 🛍️, medical doctors and pharmacies 🩺, and even public bogs 🚾; nearly every little thing has an emoji to depict it if you concentrate on it. And you may apply that to your lists to differentiate them from one another.
When all else fails, or when you take into account emojis too infantile on your liking, you possibly can at all times throw 🔴 🟡 🔵 🟢, 🟫 🟧 🟪 ⬛️, or 1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ 4️⃣ to paint code or quantity your lists — one thing that wasn’t attainable with Google Maps’s outdated blue-dot-for-all method. Take into account them labels or tags when you don’t need to consider them as emoji.
It’s a small change, sure, however emojis have made Maps lists much more manageable for me now. The insanity has icons now and so they’re really easy to identify, irrespective of the zoom stage of the map. It’s so much simpler to have a look at completely different icons than to faucet on every blue dot to see what it’s or zoom far sufficient to show its identify.
Once I’m planning a Maps route, I can shortly look to see if there’s anywhere close by on my to-do checklist or if I can swing by a regional produce retailer to select up some Italian or Lebanese merchandise. Once I’m wandering round Paris, I can test my present location on Maps and take a fast look to seek out free gardens or museums close by to go to. Now if solely Google Maps would permit me to cover random icons after I zoom in, that’d be implausible.