Get directions and have food delivered to your door, all from one app
The update centres on the handy tool Ask Maps, which now comes loaded with clever new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered features driven by the company's Gemini technology.
This means Ask Maps can now actually do things for you — like ordering your dinner or tracking your bus — rather than just showing you directions. This is similar to having a personal assistant built right into your map.
Miriam Daniel, VP and GM of Google Maps, said in a blog post: "We’ve been thrilled to see how Ask Maps is helping people use Maps in entirely new ways — from finding a restaurant with great vibes that’s still quiet enough for conversation to mapping out a scenic three-hour motorcycle ride.
"Building on this, we’re now making Ask Maps even more helpful with new agentic capabilities, real-time transit information, Personal Intelligence, and conversational contributions so you can get more done."
A clever new feature is the ability to order a meal directly in the app — a hotly anticipated feature first spotted earlier last month.
You can tell Ask Maps something like "order spicy pad kee mao with seafood for me to pick up on my way home," and it'll hunt down open restaurants along your route that serve exactly what you fancy. It even takes into account your saved places and dietary needs.
Once you've picked a restaurant, the AI pops the dish straight into your basket, ready for you to check out.
Hotels and events get the same treatment. You can ask for something specific — such as a well-rated hotel near restaurants with a creative feel — and Ask Maps will compare live prices and check availability.
And if you want to see a comedy show or concert nearby, it'll find those too and provide you with ticket links.
There's also a feature called Personal Intelligence, and it's ideal if you travel frequently or have a packed diary.
For instance, you can choose to link Ask Maps to your Gmail — and soon your Calendar too — so it automatically picks up on things like flight bookings and dinner reservations. That means you can ask something like "what should I do near my hotel before my flight tomorrow?" and get tailored suggestions without having to explain your plans from scratch. This is similar to how Amazon's Alexa+ operates.
However, Google says the Gmail connection is switched off by default, so it will need to be toggled on if you want to take advantage of this feature.
If your history settings are enabled, Ask Maps also remembers previous chats. You can ask it to recall earlier suggestions rather than starting over.
Public transport users will love the new live transit widget. It sits right inside Ask Maps and gives you up-to-the-minute delay information for buses, trains, the tube, and even ferries. If something's running late, the wait time updates minute by minute, so you know precisely when to leave. It's like having a virtual departure board in your pocket.
To help keep Google Maps accurate, the company has now made it easier to share updates by telling Ask Maps directly through conversation.
You can even snap a photo of a shop's new opening hours sign, and the app will read it and suggest the edit for you. Google says built-in safeguards still check everything for accuracy before it goes live.
