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Remember the days of yore, when getting to a new place, be it in town or when you were travelling to a new destination, meant cracking out Eicher Maps or rolling down the window and asking people for directions? Today, you just pull up your smartphone, enter the address in Google Maps and boom, you’re on your way. Can you, for a moment, imagine where we would be without Google’s mapping service? Lost, probably. But you do know that Maps can do a lot more than getting you from A to B?

Use Maps offline: Isn’t it a pain when you’re travelling and don’t have a data connection at hand? With iOS and Android apps, you can download a map of an area to view even if you’re offline. All you have to do is zoom into that part of the map when you’re online, and in the search box, type “OK Maps”. The next time you open Google Maps, even without a data connection, you’ll still be able to get around with your offline maps — just remember you won’t
be able to get directions or search for a specific location.

Plan multiple stops: Planning to hit many places when you’re stepping out for a vacation? Now you can plan out the whole route in one go — just click on the plus sign to add as many stops as you’d like. Perfect to plan the ultimate day out, all in one sitting!

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Get alternate routes: Sure, Maps gets you from A to B, but did you know that when you’re using the desktop version of Maps, you can just click and drag on parts of the route to reroute around streets or known traffic choke points? This handy feature isn’t available on the mobile version, but you do get alternate routes with estimated distance and travel times.

Make your own private Maps: Immensely useful if you’re travelling to a new city and want to mark out key points of interest. With the My Maps feature, you can create a new map with your own pin-points, add in customised walking or driving directions and measure distances and areas you’re planning to cover.

Search around you: Looking for restaurants nearby but can’t be bothered to look up Zomato? Type in “restaurants” in the Maps search, and it will highlight all the nearby restaurants that can fit in your screen. You can even search for restaurants “near Eden Gardens” even if you’re not actually there yet.

Plan for traffic: If you check Maps on your desktop, you can check and see in real-time how bad traffic is in the part of town where you’re headed — just click on the Traffic link under the “Getting around” card. What’s cooler is if you click on the “Typical traffic” option, you can choose any day or time to get a sense of what traffic tends to be like at that time.

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Peep indoors: Maps are great outdoors, but there’s a growing list of airports and malls in India and major cities across the world (see full list at bit.ly/TT-IndoorMaps) which let you peep indoors and see maps for different floors so you can plan your way around your retail therapy sessions better!

Get recommendations: Headed to a new city, and unsure of what to do? Let Google recommend stuff to you — just type in an asterisk “*” into the search box and Google will retrieve attractions like museums, stores, restaurants and other sightseeing places for you to explore. Report a problem: Found an error in Maps? You can fix it with the “Report a problem” link that will alert the Maps team to the issue. Alternatively, if you’re more the cartographer, you can head to Google Map Maker and be part of the community effort that keeps Maps data in shape.

Time travel: You may know of Google Street View, which lets you view street-level imagery for many international cities so you can be a virtual armchair tourist…or plan your next vacation down to a T! But did you know that if you click on the little stopwatch icon in Street View, you can see how the street has changed over time! Your own little
virtual time machine!