When you’re researching a new place onGoogle Maps, the navigation tool puts a red location pin at its address for easy reference while you check out cross streets and other nearby attractions. Trouble is, it’s easy to fall down a Maps rabbit hole and lose track of the initial pin, which usually means you have to zoom out and pan around until you find it again. Thankfully, this clunky experience has just been made infinitely easier with a new feature that appears to be rolling out now.
Whether you manually place a pin in the map by tapping a location or you find a spot through Maps search, you can now pan around without losing your pin. Once the pin moves off screen, an indicator shows up on the side of the map in the direction of the pin, and it stays relative to the pin’s initial placement as you pan or rotate the map. Even better, if you tap the indicator, Maps will automatically re-center itself on the initial pin.
It’s such an obvious and intuitive feature that you have to wonder why it wasn’t implemented before now. Many video games with in-game maps, like Grand Theft Auto and Need For Speed, use a similar feature to show where you are in relation to an objective or other players.
This feature is currently being seeded to Maps users worldwide, though it seems to be in the early stages of its rollout. So far, about a quarter of the devices we’ve tested on have this feature, and it appears to be an account-based change that happens independently of your Google Maps app version. We’ve also noticed that the same indicator appears when you’ve selected a person usingGoogle Maps Location Sharing.
Google has been showing love to Maps with little quality-of-life improvements like this lately, such asa new Immersive Viewandalways-on display support for WearOS smartwatches. With any luck, the feature updates will keep rolling in, asApple Maps has finally caught up to Google’s offering, so the pressure’s on to maintain an edge.
