A new way to add Google Maps to your iOS apps

Alongside the newly designed Google Maps for iPhone, we’re also excited to announce the Google Maps SDK for iOS. With the Google Maps SDK for iOS, developers can feature Google maps in their applications on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Also, the SDK makes it simple to link to Google Maps for iPhone from inside your app, enabling your users to easily search and get directions.

The SDK features vector-based maps that load quickly, allowing users to easily navigate 2D and 3D views, rotating and tilting the map with simple gestures inside your app. Developers can also change the Google maps view to include information such as traffic conditions, and control camera positions in 3D. Access to API keys is being progressively rolled out to developers who register interest.

Incorporate a Google map into your app with 3D camera position, markers and infowindows.

Any iOS app can also launch the Google Maps for iPhone app using a URL scheme. This allows Google Maps for iPhone to be launched to complete a search, show a map or Street View imagery, or to see and navigate walking, driving and transit directions easily.

Clicking on the “Directions to here” button in an app shows directions in Google Maps for iPhone, with walking, transit or driving.

Our goal is to provide you with the right tools to build the best mapping experiences across platforms including Android, Web, and now iOS.

To get started, take a look at our SDK documentation, including the URL scheme, and register interest in an API key for embeddable maps in your app.

Posted by Andrew Foster, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps

Map of the Week: London Typographica

Map of the Week: London Typographica
Why we like it: London Typographica showcases crowdsourced images of lettering and typefaces around London. It uses Styled Maps to both provide a clean background to display their markers and to allow people to navigate to areas they may want to explore.



Markers drop onto the map using Marker animation, the movement capturing our attention. Clicking on a marker doesn’t open an InfoWindow, but rather brings in a side panel that overlays on top of the left side of the map.



London Typographica is an excellent way for type and lettering enthusiasts to explore London and find their way around, and a great way to use the Google Maps API.

Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations

Ten Photos Are Worth Ten Thousand Words

At least I think that’s how the saying goes. Today, we are announcing two new features for the Google Places API that can add some visual pop to your applications: Place Photos and Radar Search.

Place Photos

Photos are one of the most highly requested features from our developers, and we’re confident that the extensive inventory from our Google+ Local pages will suit developers’ local photo needs. To include your own photos in the API, please upload them to the place’s Google+ Page. With Place Photos, each Place Search response will include a reference to a photo, and each Place Details response will include up to 10. The photo fields contain various metadata, as well as a reference that are used to retrieve the photo via the photos service. We also offer a built-in resizing functionality, so your requests can specify the photo’s maximum width and height.

Radar Search

In addition to Place Photos, we wanted to give developers easier access to the comprehensive database underlying the Places API; and what better way to showcase our Place data than by allowing bigger result sets? With Radar Search, you can access up to 200 locations and Place References with one query, no paging needed, giving you more data to play with.

Give this example a try to find the best areas in Sydney for restaurants with nice views, or where to shop for clothes in Paris - this is where the name came from, at a high zoom level, it resembles a radar image. We look forward to seeing even more beautiful visualizations from developers.



The Places API team always appreciates developer feedback so we encourage you to continue requesting additional features, or reporting any problems you find, using the Google Maps API Issue Tracker. Our Stack Overflow community is also a great resource for any technical questions.

Posted by Khang Tran, Google Places API Engineer

Building a better map of Europe, and Report a Problem in API maps

More than 800,000 web sites use the Google Maps API to create compelling location-rich applications, including travel guides, real estate portals, engaging data visualizations, and many more.  To help ensure that the maps behind these applications are best in class, the Google Maps team works constantly to ensure that our geographic data is comprehensive and accurate. As part of this ongoing effort, we’re happy to announce we’ve just released updated maps for 10 countries and regions in Europe: Andorra, Bulgaria, Estonia, Gibraltar, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. These new maps will appear immediately on all Google Maps API sites, with no code changes required.

Today’s update is part of a project called Ground Truth that began in 2008. Through this initiative, we acquire high-quality map data from authoritative sources around the world and then apply a mix of advanced algorithms, supplemental data (including satellite, aerial and Street View imagery), and human input to create a map that corresponds as closely as possible to the real-world facts that you’d find if you were to visit that location.

For example, this update adds a new 70-km section of Bulgaria’s Trakiya motorway, which opened recently to drivers but hasn’t been reflected on most maps of the region until now.



In addition to updating our map data, we’ve also enabled the “Report a problem” tool in the API for each of the 40+ countries where this tool is available on the consumer version of Google Maps.  Through this tool, any visitor to a Google Maps API V3 site can now submit corrections and feedback directly to Google, just as they might on maps.google.com.  We review and verify all user feedback and then publish any appropriate corrections -- often within just a few minutes or hours of our review.  The launch of the “Report a problem” tool in the Maps API allows the Google Maps team to increase the accuracy of our maps -- and provide quick and targeted updates to both developers and consumers -- without requiring any work from the owners of sites that use our API.  

We hope these more comprehensive and accurate maps of Europe will enable Google Maps API developers to further enhance their applications (or create entirely new ones) from Barcelona and Budapest to Bratislava and beyond!

Posted by Ken Hoetmer, Google Maps API Product Manager

Better maps in your Android apps!

(Cross posted on Google Maps Lat Long Blog) 

Today we’re launching an update to the Google Maps Android API, which gives developers the ability to use Google’s comprehensive, accurate and useful maps to build beautiful Android apps. The updated API is easy to use and features vector-based maps that load quickly and enables users to easily navigate 2D and 3D views, and tilt and rotate the map with simple gestures.

With the new version of the Google Maps Android API, developers can utilize Google Maps to its fullest. We’ve incorporated many of the highly-requested features developers want, such as:

• More dynamic and flexible UI designs for large screen Android devices, such as tablets, using Android Fragments

• Adding more Google Maps layers in their apps including satellite, hybrid, terrain, traffic and now indoor maps for many major airports and shopping centers

• The ability to create markers and info windows with less code

Some of our favorite apps already use Google Maps, such as Trulia, Expedia Hotels and FlightTrack. Soon, when you upgrade to the latest version of these apps, you’ll experience the new API and maps as rich as those in Google Maps for Android.

With the latest Google Maps Android API, Trulia Android app users can search for a place to buy or rent in 3D.

To hear from these developers about their apps and migration to the new version of the API, check out the following Google Developers Live video below.

More than 800,000 sites around the world use our mapping APIs to create amazing and useful apps. We hope you enjoy using this new addition to the Google Maps API family and building mapping experiences that were never before possible on a mobile device.

To get started, follow the Google Maps Android API v2 documentation and reach out to the developer community if you have questions on building your app with this API.

Posted by Andrew Foster, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps

Fab Friday is Fantastic

It’s Friday again. Getting ready for the weekend? I know I am. I’m thinking about what mapping project to do over the weekend.

If you’re in the same situation, this video might be helpful. On Wednesday I did another Google Maps Garage. In this one, I walked through some common errors that crop up in Google Maps Apps when loading in JSON objects. I also give out a tip on using Google Earth to gather latitude and longitude for your app.



Regular Fab Friday readers know I am a fan of video game maps. Well, I am also a fan of fantasy maps. And I recently stumbled on this map of the novel Legends of Nuvia: The Soul of Kaesh by Owen Borseth which uses the Google Maps API to show a map of the world of Nuvia.



I like it as a simple example of using a Custom Map Type. In this case, it uses an Image Map Type, and uses tiles created for that purpose.

Posted by Mano Marks, Google Maps Developer Relations team

Map of the Week: Instant Street View

Map of the Week: Instant Google Street View
Why we like it: Instant Google Street View starts clean, with a simple search box.


As Google, we find this approach very appealing.

As you type, it rapidly updates the page with images from Google Street View...

...until you get where you want to see.


Instant Street View uses the Google Places Library Autocomplete Service to quickly get the location you’re looking for. It uses the Street View Service to display the Street View panoramas. And when you’ve found what you want to look at, you share it via your favorite social media or get a quick map view:



Most of all, we love that it’s fast. So get out there and share some great images from Instant Street View.

Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations