5 Google Maps tricks that every user needs to know

Google Maps has made a name for itself, helping people travel from place to place, but it can be useful even when you know exactly how to get where you are going.

So here are some handy tricks you can use on Google Maps.

Avoid traffic

You probably know by heart the route from home to the grocery store, but what you don’t know for sure is the traffic situation. It is annoying for a short car ride to turn into a state at a traffic light for 15 minutes, while a construction crew guides an excavator.

Checking traffic on Google Maps only takes a few seconds. In a browser, go to the area you want to check and click on the traffic label in the left panel.

If there is no panel, click on the white tab with the arrow pointing to the right, in the upper left corner of the map. Also, make sure the menu at the bottom of the map is set to show live traffic.

In the phone app, tap the icon on the top right and select “Traffic.” Consider checking the map from time to time until that blockage is resolved. The application on Android or iOS should update automatically, but you may need to manually refresh the browser page.

Measure a distance

Want to know the distance between two locations? Google Maps can help. In a browser, right-click anywhere on the map and select “Measure Distance” from the menu that appears. Then click elsewhere. You can click and drag each end of the measurement line, click somewhere in the middle and drag the cursor to an intermediate location, or click elsewhere to add another point.

It’s a little more complicated on the phone. First, tap the map to display a red location code. Then touch the pine. Select “Measure distance” and drag the map to select an endpoint.

Once you’ve got it, tap “Add point” or the plus icon in the lower right corner of the screen.

See inside the buildings

Google Street View has been around for years, but you may not know it. Sure, you may have used it to navigate the roads in distant parts of the world, but you can also use it to take a look inside buildings or even to visit museums.

For example, the American Museum of Natural History in New York. From the browser window, click on Pegman and drag it to the map. In addition to the blue-highlighted roads, you will see a maze of paths inside the building. This way, you will see what it looks like inside. From there, navigation is the same as in Street View: click and drag to rotate the camera and use the on-screen arrows or the arrow keys on your computer to navigate.

On a phone, tap the icon on the top right and select Street View. This will highlight the areas visible in blue and you can reach a location to enter. Then tap and drag the screen to move around and look around.

Go back in time

Street View displays the latest images of an area by default, but you may see what your neighborhood looked like more than a decade ago. You already know the first steps from the previous point.

But to see what an area once looked like, go to the gray box in the upper left corner of the screen and click on the clock icon next to Street View. Drag the slider at the bottom of the pop-up window to see the same location over the years and click on an image to upload that year in the main view for the tour.

Unfortunately, this “time travel” option is not available on phones – you can only use it in a browser.

Discover the availability of parking spaces

This feature is the ability to predict how many parking spaces will be available in certain locations.

Set the directions to a place in the app (even if you know 100% how to get there) and you may see a small parking icon next to your travel time and distance measurement. Possible assessments are: limited, medium and light. Swipe up to see the steps, and Google can also tell you where you’re parking.