How do I customize a Google map better?

March 22, 2024 7:55 AM

Whenever someone recommends a restaurant to me, I save it in a Google map called "Food to eat." When I look at the map, Google insists on throwing other businesses in there. Is there any way to stop it from suggesting other places? The icons are different but I don't want them anyway.

Also: after I've tried the restaurant, I'd like to mark it as "this was good, eat here again" but have it be visually different from "I heard this was good, try this one." I'm doing this all by saving pins, not by making a custom map from scratch, but it looks like custom maps also show businesses Google wants to have on there (and custom maps are a pain to do on the fly).

I'm open do doing this on something other than Google maps, but Google seems to be the easiest since they almost always have the business I'm looking for. I do this on my iPhone; it needs to be something I can do when I'm out and about.

posted by The corpse in the library to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I have the exact same issue, so I can't help with everything, but I just add restaurants to a list of "hits" or "disappointments". That way, when I look at a restaurant and google shows me which lists it's in, I can immediately see if I liked it or not (I keep the disappointments because sometimes I forget I've been somewhere).
posted by Skyanth at 8:33 AM on March 22

Google MyMaps lets you change the base map to one without these extra locations. However, you can't edit / add to it from Google Maps, though you can open it from Google Maps (at which point it will have those extra locations in the background again). It's a good option when you are looking on desktop, though.
posted by beyond_pink at 8:58 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

You can now apply visually distinct icons to your own Google Maps lists. That might be a way to help filter out the visual clutter?

Edited to add: I think you can only do this on new lists, though, not on existing ones.
posted by tavegyl at 9:28 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

tavegyl, this is huge! I’ve been waiting for this feature for a while. I just tested and you can edit existing lists to give them an emoji icon, which will appear on the map (on iOS google maps, at least).
posted by mustardayonnaise at 8:13 AM on March 23 [1 favorite]