What you need to know
- The Live View beta in Google Maps is expanding to Android and iOS devices running ARCore and ARKit.
- The updated Timeline will allow you to relive your travels and export them to share with friends and family.
- Google Maps will also let you view "all of your flight and hotel reservations in one place" under Reservations in the app.
Google Maps has always been valuable for travelers, and Google just keeps making it better. The company just announced a slew of new features coming to the platform, with one of them being something called "Live View."
Starting this week, Live View will be available on Android and iOS devices that support ARCore and ARKit. Using Live View, you can navigate within Google Maps with Augmented Reality seeing a "live view" of your surroundings along with street names and directions.
Live View has been available for Pixel phones for the last view months, and even though some hiccups are expected with it still being a beta, we're excited to see the feature make its way to more devices.
Another new trick Google Maps is picking up is the ability to show "all of your flight and hotel reservations in one place." To access this, tap on the hamburger button in the top left corner, choose Your Places, Reservations, and you'll be able to browse all of your upcoming trips. To view more information, such as your flight info, just tap on one of the trips. Even cooler is the fact that it's also available even when you're offline, so no reason to worry about if you have a signal or not.
Once you're back, you'll naturally want to be able to relive all the memories you made and share them with friends and family. If you've turned on Location History, then Maps can help you out there as well. Google says by using the updated version of Timeline:
You'll also be able to see all of the places you went to in a country or a city, and even drill down to the categories of places you visited–including restaurants, shops, attractions, hotels and airports.
The upgraded Timeline will even allow you to make notes about what you liked so you can export it and share it with your friends and family for their trip.
The flight and hotel reservation features, Live View (where it is available), and Timeline will be rolling out to phones in the coming weeks. While you can expect to see Reservations and Live View on both Android and iOS, the new Timeline feature will only be available on Android.
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