While researching my upcoming trip I found a lot of customized maps. I knew they were different than saving items in Google Maps, but I decided to find out how to make my own.
To create customized maps for Google, you need to go to a website (google.com/maps) and be logged in to your Google account. Here’s the support page.
There’s a bunch of stuff you can do with these maps, like create a walking tour with numbered stops, showing a list of favorite restaurants, or what our library system did for a visit challenge: show all the libraries in an area. You can then use the maps on the Google Maps app, even without internet. You can share them as a link or through social media, or embed them on your website. Create a new map and play around, the website will save your maps, so label them if you make more than one.
Creating Layers
For my purposes of a vacation planning map, I made several different layers. Click “add layer” and then search for items you want to add to the layer on the search bar. Then click on the place and click “add to map”. It will go to whatever layer you currently have highlighted.
I made a few different categories, and renamed the layers as those categories.
- experiences
- information
- stay
- places to eat
- shopping
You could make whatever categories you want, such as book stores, Instagram spots, statues, waterfalls or castles. I had a few relatives addresses on mine (which I deleted before sharing here).
Once you have the layers set with the places you want, you can customize the layers. To give them all one icon, select uniform style, which lumps everything in a layer together. (Don’t worry, you can undo that and see the list again if you need to). Click the little paint can next to “all items” in a layer, and you can choose a color and an icon. The icons shown are the standard ones that Google maps uses, you can click “more” to see a huge array of choices or the ability to create custom ones. If you are going to get cutesy and put in photos, remember that it will be tiny.
When you have the map the way you want it, you can click share and copy the link to send to your travel companions. If you want to embed it like I have done below, click the menu next to your map title (three dots) and select that option.( It will provide all the html so don’t use embed, just custom HTML)
Want to see the full map? Click the icon that looks like this:
Now you can see all the layers, you can hide layers by unchecking them. The people you share it with can use your information for directions but they can’t edit the list. Clicking on a specific item will bring up information and images from the maps app.
This was a fun learning experience, and I think I can use this in other ways, like sharing directions to the library from another location.
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