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 preserving tabs on all of the cool spots all over the world that I hope to see at some point. However should 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 increasingly more locations to my completely different Paris and world lists, I seen they had been turning into ineffective total, particularly on the comparatively small display screen of my Android telephone. 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 had been turning into indistinguishable blue dots littering your map view.
It bought so dangerous that I began hiding and exhibiting lists on demand to have the ability to make sense of the insanity. And neglect about journey planning, I grew to become a frequent person of Wanderlog as a result of I may color-code and decide descriptive icons for every checklist in each journey in that app.
However Google Maps just lately rolled out a easy but improbable 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 notice that it solves the checklist visibility drawback altogether.
My bakeries bought a 🥖 image, my meals shops a 🥫, and the pastry retailers 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 take pleasure in some nature or tradition are marked with a coin 🪙, and so forth.
Each passion, 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 needs to be an emoji for that. Gardens ⛲️, parks 🌲, museums 🎨, theatres 🎭, pubs 🍺, music venues 🎶, espresso retailers ☕️, operating tracks 🏃, children playgrounds 🛝, skate parks 🛹, gyms 🏋️, procuring departments 🛍️, medical doctors and pharmacies 🩺, and even public bathrooms 🚾; virtually the whole lot has an emoji to depict it if you consider it. And you’ll apply that to your lists to differentiate them from one another.
When all else fails, or should you take into account emojis too infantile to your liking, you’ll be able to all the time throw 🔴 🟡 🔵 🟢, 🟫 🟧 🟪 ⬛️, or 1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ 4️⃣ to paint code or quantity your lists — one thing that wasn’t doable with Google Maps’s previous blue-dot-for-all strategy. Think about them labels or tags should 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, regardless of the zoom stage of the map. It’s loads simpler to take 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 title.
After I’m planning a Maps route, I can rapidly look to see if there’s anyplace close by on my to-do checklist or if I can swing by a regional produce retailer to choose up some Italian or Lebanese merchandise. After I’m wandering round Paris, I can examine my present location on Maps and take a fast look to search out free gardens or museums close by to go to. Now if solely Google Maps would permit me to cover random icons once I zoom in, that’d be improbable.
