Never Miss The Spots You Want To Visit With This Clever Google Maps Hack

When you're still in the planning stages of your trip to a new city, it's always a great idea to make a note of all the attractions, restaurants, sites, and activities you'll want to check out. When you actually set foot in the city, Google Maps is a great tool to help you find your way to each item on your to-do list. However, sometimes you just want to wander, get lost, and hit the pavement and see where you end up. In that scenario, it can be a bit bothersome to have to constantly search in Google Maps for the nearest café or restaurant on your list. That's why TikTok is raving about this new Google Maps hack that makes seeing the sites a little more fun, and a heck of a lot more organized.

TikTok user @thatverybadlawstudent who goes by Soph shared to her over 42,000 followers a new way to pin your to-do list to a city map. In the video that has been liked more than 88,000 times, she reveals that on your desktop computer before your trip, you should head to My Maps Google, which is a bit different from Google Maps, where you select the city you're heading to, and create a new customized map of attractions and tourist sites you want to hit up. She reveals that you can customize this map right down to the icons. Here's how it's done, and why it will take the guesswork out of wandering aimlessly.

In her viral TikTok video, Soph shares that once you create your new city map, you can create different layers for each category of attraction, for example a café layer, a museum layer, and more, and then you start adding in all of the recommendations or items on your bucket list to each appropriate layer. What makes this map different than just pinning places to a map is that you can customize the icons. Using YouTuber @VeraVlogs idea, she goes to FlatIcon.com to create a free account, and downloads a bunch of icons like a coffee cup or a museum building. Saving them, she then uploads each icon to the settings of each layer on her customized map. "The best part about this is you can open this map up on Google Maps on your phone and you can just search around all the different areas and when you tap on an icon it will tell you what that icon is," she explains.

This isn't the only TikToker who is raving about the features in My Maps. User @JessicaWantsANap adds that you can include important transportation hubs "because sometimes you really do want to be close to a train station or airport." Her video has been liked more than 915,000 times. What we love about these hacks is that, no matter how far you wander, you'll never truly be lost, and you know your next meal or adventure is just a short distance away.