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To Create Custom Maps in Google Maps for yourself or for someone else, you don’t need any special software. All you need is Google Maps, which lets you add your own points, shapes, and directions to a map. This is how.
To do this, you will need to use Google Maps on your desktop. If your Google Maps screen is blank, you will also need to clear your site data. When you make a custom map in Google Maps, you can’t make a new landscape. You can only use planet Earth. You can, however, add your own points of interest, routes, and locations.
You can also add your own shapes to the map to make it more interesting. You can look at a custom map in the Google Maps app for Android and iPhone, but you can only make one in the desktop version of Google Maps.
Ways to Create Custom Maps in Google Maps
Use Mapping Software like Maptive
- Start a free trial with Maptive.
- Once on your Maptive home page, click on the Create New Map button.
- In the “Create a New Map” popup, name your map, and click continue.
- Our map customizer software allows you to select your data source. You can choose to upload a spreadsheet, copy and paste data, use Google Sheets, or in this example, add markers manually.
- Then click on the “Place a marker on the map” button.
- Then move the map and click on the location you want to place a marker.
- To add more markers click on the “Add a marker to your map” icon and repeat the previous 2 steps.
- Once completed, your map might look like the one below. The arrow points to where you can go to share this map, but as you can see there are too many options within Mattive to show on one page. Feel free to play around with a map or visit our features page to read about each individual feature.
Create a map with the Google Maps API
With Google Maps Platform, you can make a map that works exactly the way you want it to. This method is the most flexible and is free up to a certain point that Google sets. But you need to know how to code to use it, and adding all the features you want can take a long time and be hard. You’ll need to know a lot about HTML, JavaScript, and other programming languages if you want to make more than a simple map.
Create Custom Maps using Google Maps
- Go to the Google My Maps Page
- Click on the Menu icon in the top left-hand corner.
- Click on the “Your Places” option in the menu.
- Click on the “Maps” Tab in the top right.
- Click on the “CREATE MAP” link at the bottom of the menu.
- Once you are on the map creation page, click the marker icon to add a marker to the page.
- Find a place on the map you want to add a marker and click on that location on the map.
- This will place a marker on the map and bring up a box where you can add a name, description, and other attributes to the marker.
- Repeat the previous 3 steps as many times as needed to add more markers to the map.
- Once you are finished, you can customize your map details in the following ways:
- Click on location 1 “Untitled Map” to rename your map.
- Click on the 3 dots button in location 2 to rename your layer.
- Click on “Share” in location 3 on the image to share your map with other.
- To Customize the Appearance of your map you can change the base style of the map by clicking on “Base map” and selecting a style:
Visit their official website for more information.
Best Google Maps Alternatives
Bing Maps
Bing Maps is another well-known alternative to Google Maps. It has an interface that is clean and easy to use. Along the top are all the buttons for directions, traffic, directions, and sharing. Bing Maps also has almost all of the features that Google Maps does, such as transit maps, road and streetside layers, and more. You can set up your trip so that it avoids tolls and highways, just like you can with Google Maps.
You can also easily add stops along the way and print out the Map to bring with you. When you search for directions on Bing Maps, you’ll get written directions on the left and a picture of the rules on your Map.
Apple Maps
Apple Maps is one of the most private apps that can be used instead of the Google App. Apple Maps has changed a lot since it was first released. If you have an iPhone, you won’t want to use any other app to search for a place or see how to get there. Apple did everything it could to make its native web mapping services private, and it has been able to fix the bugs and accuracy problems that were in its first release.
Maps.Me
Maps.Me is both an app and a website, and it has all the features you’d want in a good mapping service: information about traffic, public transportation, cycling navigation, and anything else you can think of. Just like Google, it lets you save the maps to use later if you are in an area with a bad network. This is a nice thing to have, especially when you are exploring a new city or country.
Maps.Me is a great choice for people who like to wander and travel to new places often. It tells you about all the well-known places in the city, as well as places you should visit and places to eat. You’ll also find a huge list of all the hiking trails in the world, which is regularly updated.