Maps

Airports can be hectic, and just about every traveler knows the stress of visiting an airport they have never been to before and trying to quickly navigate the maze of terminals to find their gate so that they can board a plane on time. A great trick that can ease the stress of travel and help you plan your travels better is to use Apple Maps on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, to virtually navigate within an airport beforehand.

With Apple Maps airport exploration mode, you can explore inside airports to find terminals, boarding gates, baggage claims, check-in counters, security checkpoints, bathrooms and toilets, restaurants, shops, and more. This makes travel planning a bit easier and takes some of the stress out, particularly if you’re visiting a huge airport, or one you’re just unfamiliar with.

All you need is an iPhone or iPad to get started. The rest is super easy.

How to Use “Look Inside” Airport on Apple Maps

1. Open the “Maps” app on the iPhone or iPad, be sure the map setting is set to map mode and not satellite view
2. In the “Search” section, type in the Airport you want to browse and look in (you can also use airport codes, like “LAX”)
3. Zoom in a bit and locate the terminal you want to investigate, then tap on the “Look Inside” text



4. Now zoom in further or navigate around the airport map, tapping on a Terminal to view even more information, including check-ins, gates, security, bag claims, food, drinks, shops, restrooms / toilets, and more

In the example screenshots here, we’re using an iPad to browse Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), which is a large, busy, and particularly sprawling and complex airport to navigate around with its myriad shuttles, many terminals, parking garages, as well as many food and shopping options.

You can use this feature anytime from an iPhone or iPad as long as you have internet access on the device, but it’s probably best to browse around an airport before you’re actually in it, or when you’re in it. Of course you could also use in-flight wi-fi service to browse through a destination airport before you land, which would certainly make the process of landing a bit easier too. If you already know where to go before you land, you’ll be navigating the airport like a seasoned traveler!

If you’re traveling with a companion but on different flights, or you’re looking to meet-up with someone in an airport, a great way to use this feature is to use this in combination with either Mark & Share Location in Maps for iOS or “Share Current Location” in Messages on iPhone, to share where you are, or where you want to meet up, with your travel partner, so that you can meet up with each other in the airport for a quick bite to eat, or to pair up and find your baggage together. That’s particularly great if you’re flying to the same destination as someone else but you’re on different flights.

Oh and as a bonus tip, don’t forget that you can also see the weather reports of locations in Apple Maps too (it’s in the corner of the Maps screen), so if you’re not quite sure what the weather will be upon arrival or departure, you can check that as well.

Do note that not all airports are supported by this Apple Maps feature, yet anyway, but most major international airport hubs, busy US airports, and international airports are supported and can be browsed through this way. Considering that it’s usually the biggest and most busy airports that are the most complex, this makes some degree of sense, but don’t necessarily expect a tiny airport in a rural location to be included in the Look Inside feature of Apple Maps, so if you’re flying into some tiny remote destination you’ll have to just figure that one out on your own.

Happy travels!

Related

By default, the Maps app for iPhone will use voice navigation when giving directions. Voice navigation and talking directions is also the standard setting for Google Maps on iPhone too. But sometimes users can accidentally toggle the voice navigation settings off when they didn’t intend to, or forget to turn the voice navigation settings back on if they were disabled at some point.

Not to worry, if you want spoken directions from your mapping applications then this article will show you how to enable (or re-enable) voice navigation directions for both the Apple Maps and Google Maps apps on iPhone.

Wait: Turn Up iPhone volume!

Before anything else, be sure you turn up the iPhone volume on your actual iPhone. Do this by pressing the physical Volume up button on the side of the iPhone repeatedly until the volume is set at maximum level as shown by the on-screen volume indicator.

It’s fairly easy to inadvertently crank the volume all the way down using the physical buttons, and obviously if the device volume is off or down then the voice navigation will not be heard. So before anything else, just make sure the iPhone volume is up all the way and is working as expected.

You’ll also want to make sure the iPhone does not have headphones or anything using the audio port plugged in. Another possibility is that the iPhone is stuck in Headphones mode, although that is fairly rare to occur, and if that happens then all audio won’t come through the normal iPhone speaker in general rather than just in the Maps applications.

Now that you’re assured the iPhone has volume turned up all the way, you can turn to the specific Apple Maps and Google Maps apps to make sure audio is enabled in each of those too.

How to Enable Voice Navigation in Apple Maps on iPhone

If voice navigation and speaking directions are not working with the Apple Maps app on the iPhone, and you already turned the physical volume up all the way, then you may find the voice navigation settings have been turned off or disabled. Here is how you can easily re-enable the voice navigation settings in Apple Maps:

1. Open the “Settings” app on the iPhone and go to “Maps” settings
2. Go to the “Driving & Navigation” settings
3. Look for the “Navigation Voice Volume” setting and choose ‘Loud Volume’, ‘Normal Volume’, or ‘Low Volume’ to re-enable voice navigation in Apple Maps for iOS



4. Exit out of Settings and get directions from Apple Maps as usual

The key thing with Apple Maps voice navigation settings is to make sure you don’t have “No Voice” set otherwise no matter how loud the volume is on your iPhone, you won’t have voice navigation available.

You can also enable or re-enable voice navigation for directions in Apple Maps directly from the Apple Maps application by swiping up from the bottom of the directions screen and choosing “Audio Settings”

These settings should apply through any directions given by the Apple Maps application, whether you are initiating them through the Apple Maps app directly or even if you’re starting by asking Siri to use voice navigation and turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone.

How to Enable Voice Navigation in Google Maps for iPhone

Google Maps voice navigation settings can be toggled off or on directly within the Google Maps app while giving directions. The settings toggle makes it kind of easy to accidentally turn off or on the voice navigation for directions, so just be sure you have the setting properly enabled if you want to hear voice directions. As before, be sure you turn up the iPhone volume all the way first.

1. Open Google Maps on iPhone and start directions to any location as usual
2. Look in the upper-right corner of the Google Maps app for the little speaker icon and tap on that



3. Make sure the speaker option is enabled in Google Maps on iPhone

It’s pretty easy to mute and un-mute voice directions in Google Maps, which is nice if you’re trying to quietly get directions somewhere or you want to temporarily silence spoken navigation to a destination. But that can also mean it’s easy to accidentally toggle, since the audio navigation setting is just on the screen all the time. So just toggle the speaker button in Google Maps for iPhone and you’ll be able to get audio back again.

That should be it, whether you’re using Google Maps or Apple Maps for directions, you now know how to enable or re-enable voice navigation in each app on your iPhone.

Did this help you to get voice navigation and spoken directions working on your iPhone? Do you have another solution or trick for troubleshooting voice navigation not working on iPhone maps apps? Share your comments and experiences below!

Related

The iOS Maps app has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, including a settings toggle that allows you to get directions to and from destinations while avoiding highways and freeways. This is particularly helpful for iPhone users that rely on the Maps app for directions and getting around, but it works on iPad as well.

Getting Maps directions that avoid highways may be helpful for many reasons; maybe you don’t like driving on highways, maybe you’re trying to avoid a predictable traffic jam, or maybe you just want to use side roads and backroads. Whatever the reason, if you’d like to enable the Maps feature to avoid highways it’s easy to turn on, and likewise if you enabled the avoid highways feature at some point in time and now want to disable it, it’s equally as easy to turn the feature off again.

The “avoid highways” Maps toggle requires a modern version of iOS, if you’re on an ancient version of system software you would need to update to have such a feature.

How to Turn On or Off “Avoid Highways” in Maps for iOS

The “Avoid Highways” capability is available along with a separate “Avoid Tolls” option in Maps for iOS, you can toggle each on or off individually on any iPhone or iPad:

1. Open the “Settings” app on your iPhone or iPad



2. Go to “Maps” and then tap on “Driving & Navigation”



3. Look for the “Avoid” section and toggle the switch next to “Highways”

• If the “Highways” switch is enabled then Maps will avoid highways whenever possible
• If the “Highways” switch is disabled (default) then Maps will use highways as normal

Exit Settings and return to Maps for your changes to take effect on the next set of directions

You can confirm the change has been made by getting Maps directions to some location that requires the usage of a highway.

The change also carries through to turn-by-turn voice navigation directions initiated by Siri on the iPhone.

Debatably, it might be more useful to have the settings toggle for avoiding highways (and tolls) directly within the Maps app, but for now you must be go the Settings app to toggle the features off or on as you see fit.

The Maps app for iOS has a lot of interesting features, you can easily add stops for food and gas on a road trip, see weather directly in the Maps app for destinations, show GPS coordinates for locations, input GPS coordinates for locations, mark and share specific locations, get directions via transit, and so much more.

It’s worth pointing out that some users may be tempted to use the “Avoid Highways” feature for avoiding traffic routine jams, but don’t expect it perform quite a good as something like Waze or another app which is dedicated specifically for that purpose. So while it may not avoid traffic, it will avoid highways, whereas if you want to avoid both (or just traffic) you may be better off trying an app like Waze for iPhone for such a purpose.

Happy travels! And if you have any particular experience with the “avoid highways” feature in iOS Maps, share them in the comments below.

Related

Have you ever wished you could view all of your geotagged pictures on a map? With the Mac Photos app, you can do exactly that by accessing a handy map of all images containing geotagging and GPS data, each displayed on a nice navigable map, right within the Photos app of Mac OS.

For some quick background, if an image is geotagged it will have embedded GPS metadata stored with the picture file to maintain a record of exactly where a photo was taken (or at least where an image was assigned a location for).

While many privacy advocates don’t like geotagged pictures – particularly if the images are posted to the internet, social networks, social media, or any other broad service for the world to see – some users may find having precise location data within images to be useful.

This only works if you have pictures within the Mac Photos app that are geotagged with GPS data. If you removed location data from Photos on the Mac, otherwise routinely bulk strip GPS and metadata out of images for privacy reasons or compression purposes, or turned off geotagging and camera GPS on iPhone, you may not have geotagged image data to work with and thus wouldn’t have anything showing up in the Photos app.

How to See Map of All Geotagged Pictures in Photos for Mac

1. Open the Photos app on the Mac
2. From the Photos sidebar, choose “Places” to load the geotagged photo map

Note if the sidebar isn’t visible by default, you can go to the View menu to reveal the sidebar as expected.

The “Places” section of the Photos app will always show GPS tagged images that are within the Photos app of Mac OS, but there are other ways to see geotagged images as well.

You can zoom in and out on the GPS tagged photo map, and you can set the map to be a satellite view too if you’d like. The map with the geotagged images is the same type of maps you encounter with the Apple Maps app on Mac and iOS.

Show Nearby Photos with Geotagging

You can also show nearby geotagged photos that may relate to an existing geotagged image by having a nearby location:

1. From Photos on the Mac, open a geotagged picture you want to find other nearby photos for
2. Scroll down to reveal the “Places” section and then click on the “Show Nearby Photos” option

You can also view EXIF data directly from Photos app, which will also show the geotagging information if relevant.

This can also offer a simple way to see a bunch of images that have GPS data if you want to remove the location data from the picture directly within the Photos app on the Mac, or if you want to know what image files should be passed through a Mac app like ImageOptim to strip the image files of EXIF metadata and GPS coordinates.

So there you have it, now you can quickly see all the geotagged pictures you have played out on a map for you within the Photos app. And if you have other pictures elsewhere you wish to check this for, you’d want to import those image files into Photos app, or copy the pictures from an iPhone or camera to Photos app on Mac first. Just remember that if you do have GPS and geotagging data stored in pictures and you choose to share those pictures with someone else or post them online, technically anyone can retrieve the metadata and GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken.

Related

Did you know you can get the weather in the Maps app of iOS? Obviously the Weather app on iPhone will tell you the temperature and forecast of locations, and with a little exploration you can also view detailed weather info too. That’s great, but it’s in the Weather app. What if you’re driving or exploring the in Maps application in iOS, and want to get the weather report of your destination or of a specific location, directly from the Maps app on iPhone?

The latest versions of Apple Maps for iOS include a little weather report widget that will give you the temperature and weather info of a particular location in Maps. Going further, if you have an iPhone with 3D Touch, then you can use a little 3D Touch trick to get a weather forecast directly from the Maps app in iOS and even add that destination to your Weather app too.

How to View the Weather in Maps for iOS on iPhone

1. Open the Maps app on the iPhone and enter any location as usual
2. Once the location has loaded in Maps app, look in the lower right corner of the Maps app for a little tiny weather widget – this will show you the temperature and a weather icon for that destination



3. Bonus trick for 3D Touch equipped iPhone models: now 3D Touch on that weather icon to reveal a forecast and expanded weather info

This works with any location that Maps or Weather can gather weather data for, even seemingly in the middle of nowhere it usually will pull weather data from a nearby weather station, so give it a try with cities, towns, or even rural spots that are off the beaten path.

3D Touch Maps Weather Tricks

If you soft press with 3D Touch, you will see a forecast and more detailed weather information.

If you firm press with 3D Touch, the Maps app will redirect that location to the Weather app and ask if you’d like to add it to the Weather app, or just view that location in Weather app for more specific weather information like wind speed, humidity, heat index, chance of rain, and extended forecasts.

Of course if you don’t have 3D Touch, don’t feel too left out, you will still see the weather widget in the corner of the Maps app.

If you don’t see the weather details in the corner of Maps app when browsing destinations and locations, you may have an older version of iOS and need to update your system software to gain this ability in the Maps app for iPhone.

Remember, you an also retrieve weather information from Spotlight in iOS or even get weather info from Siri too, from either iPhone or iPad.

Have you ever wished you could access a mapping application from the command line? Now you can with Mapscii, which is sort of like Google Maps or Apple Maps but for the Terminal, with all of the mapping data rendered in ASCII text and characters.

MapSCII uses OpenStreetMap data and the entire Earth can be navigated through the command line seamlessly rendered in ASCII. Beyond just being interesting and a kind of fun proof of concept to access mapping data from the command line in a console map rendered in ASCII, MapSCII is also Braille compatible which is obviously valuable for many users in and of itself (and certainly more useful than watching Star Wars in ASCII from the Terminal).

OK enough talk, you probably want to try this out yourself (well, if you’re a geek like me anyway). This is demonstrated on a Mac with Terminal app but because you’re telnetting into a remote server you can also access MapSCII from any other terminal application, whether it’s on Mac OS X, Linux, unix, or Windows with an app like PuTTY or the Windows 10 linux bash shell.

Accessing Maps from the Terminal with MapSCII

1. Open the Terminal application, found in /Applications/Utilities/, and type the following command syntax:

telnet mapscii.me

2. Hit Return and once you are connected to the remote MapSCII server you are ready to browse and enjoy the ASCII maps

MapSCII can be navigated by the keyboard or mouse, keyboard navigation is easy with the following keys:

• Use arrow keys to navigate around the map: Up, down, left right
• A zooms in to the maps
• Z zooms out of the maps
• C toggles ASCII mode off/on

You can also click and hold and drag on the map with your mouse cursor.

Whether or not you find this fun, interesting, geeky, useful or useless, is up to you. Most users will be perfectly happy using Google Maps on the web or iPhone, or the Apple Maps app on their Mac, iPhone, or iPad, but even then it’s still fun to be able to access a full fledged mapping application from the command line.

Let’s see if embedding this works:

The MapSCII project is open source and you can also install it locally if you’d like, check the project out on GitHub here.

If you liked this you’ll almost enjoy our other command line posts and topics, so take a look.

There are many instances where the exact location and the ETA of your friends would be really helpful. Usually, you’re left with messaging each of them, trying to make sense of timing (which is never a fun thing to do). But now, if your friends choose to do so, they can share their location and ETA with you, live, securely and privately, using Google Maps.

How To Share Location With Google Maps

Step 1: To share the location, open the Google Maps app and tap on the hamburger menu. From the list, select Share Location.

Step 2: From the pop-up, select the time limit for shared location.

Step 3: Tap on People and select the contacts you want to share the location with. Then tap on Share. From here you’ll need to give Google access to monitor your location even when the app is in background.

Now you’re in the shared view screen. If the other person is sharing their location, you’ll see it in their tab. Tap on the profile icons on the top to switch between the locations of different people.

How To Stop Sharing Location With Google Maps

Step 1: To stop sharing, go to the Share Location view first and tap the toggle button at the bottom.

Step 2: Do this for all your friends.

Quite A Smart Feature

The Location Sharing feature in Google Maps is quite smart, in multiple ways. It also lets you share your location while you’re navigating with Google Maps. So your friends can know your ETA as well. You can also send updates to your friends during your travel.

How do you usually send your location to your friends? Do you use the built-in feature in iMessage? Do you think you’ll use this feature in Google Maps? Share with us in the comments below.

You can also share your location in the Messages, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Check out our articles to find out how:

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