Google Maps is still the unmatched king of navigation apps, and not just because of its excellent map data. Many useful features on Maps can help you find specific places, answer questions for your community, plot out road trips, and much more.
One of those really cool features is the ability to create your own custom Google Maps for personal use or to share them with others in your area. Google saw a pretty big uptick in this feature during 2020, but it's still around with a large community of customized maps for you to check out.
We'll show how you to create your own custom Google Maps in just a few steps.
Go to Google Maps on your computer
The first step to getting started making your own maps is to go to Google Maps on your computer. Unfortunately, you won't be able to make these maps on your phone; we'll need a full web browser.
Google's page for this shows everything that you can do with a custom map, like drawing points of interest or importing data from a spreadsheet. We want to scroll all the way to the bottom and click Create Maps to start creating.
On the next page, you'll see the web interface for creating and managing your custom maps. When you start creating a map, you'll get the alert that it uses your Google Drive storage and syncs everything via Google's cloud service, so make sure you have all of that set up on your Google account.
Custom Google Maps interface
The next page is where the real science starts to happen. This interface gives you several options for creating your maps and gives you pretty granular control over everything. You can adjust your base map from several color options or a terrain or satellite view, add and remove layers, and start to work on your custom map.
There are a lot of things you can add to these maps. The simplest would be custom points, so you could do something like drop POIs for everywhere that you wanted to go on a road trip; you can change the icons and colors for all of these points, too, so keeping things organized and clearly labeled is easy.
But the points don't necessarily have to represent businesses. Some hospitals have used these custom maps to show outbreaks and locations of handwashing stations, and you could even make a history map showing everywhere that you had a major milestone in a relationship, for instance.
Aside from the icons, you can also set up directions and routes to save on this map. The road trip example works pretty well here, too, since you can build a layer that only covers the places you stopped at on your cross-country drive, for instance. And you can create all kinds of different shapes and lines to measure areas and distances, if you're really trying to get granular with it.
Once you're done, you don't have to worry about doing anything specific. Google automatically saves your work and makes it available across all your devices, so you can immediately pick up your phone, check your map, and get started with that road trip. There are some share options, so you can export it to other formats, embed it in your website, or simply publish it so anyone can browse and find the map via Google Maps and utilize what you've made.
Have you ever made your own custom Google Maps, or did this spark an idea for you? If you've created anything before, send us a link, and let us check it out!
