Planning a Group Outing? This Google Maps Feature Can Help

Ever try to make plans to get out to dinner with a grouping of people? Information technology's a nightmare. Your one friend needs vegan options, another person is gluten-free, you lot're peckish pho, and 20 grouping texts later, no one tin can hold.

Google wants to go far a petty easier to reach a consensus. During its I/O developer conference in May, the web giant tipped a new Maps feature that lets you create a shortlist of places that tin can be shared with friends, who can add together to the list and vote for their favorite. Now, that feature is finally arriving.

Coming soon, you can as well use @googlemaps to hands make plans as a grouping. Create a shortlist of places within the app and instantly share it with friends across whatsoever platform to have a vote and quickly decide on where to go. #io18 pic.twitter.com/thdvUf8qQ7
— Google (@Google) May 8, 2022

To endeavor it out, long-press on any place to add information technology to a shortlist, which will appear as a round "floating bubble on the side of your screen," Google Maps Senior Production Managing director Sophia Lin explained in a Wednesday blog mail. When you're finished calculation places to the list, you can share it with friends via "any messaging platform."

Recipients will see all the options y'all selected on a map and can scroll through a carousel at the bottom of the screen to encounter details about each identify. Every fellow member of the group can add or delete places and vote on their option.

Google is rolling out this new group planning feature on Android and iOS this week.

The update comes after Google in June launched a redesigned Explore tab in Maps that offers recommendations for restaurants, bars, and cafes in whatsoever surface area you lot're interested in researching. The app also now offers trending lists of places y'all might want to bank check out, culled from local experts and Google's algorithms.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's expert on fitness and smart domicile products. Teaching yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fettle trackers, heart charge per unit monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, forcefulness training machines, treadmills, and more than. Angela also tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to name a few.