It’s getting to be that time of year again when we travel around the state, country, or even world to hang out with friends and family—and Google Maps’ latest updates can help with that. Granted, a couple of these features aren’t new, but they are being made available in more areas. The augmented Street View feature, Live View, is extending availability to six new cities, allowing you to look through your camera to find marked points of interest. Now, whenever you’re in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, or Tokyo, you can turn it on and move your phone around to find the shops, restaurants, etc., that you’re looking for. Searches for electric vehicle (EV) charging are also getting beefed up with a new “fast charge” filter, so you can weed out stations with less than 50kW outputs. On top of that, more countries will support plug-type filters to make sure you get results that are compatible with your car. Accessible Places adds wheelchair accessibility to location search filters and has only been available in Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US—but now it’s going global. Once it’s turned on in Google Maps, your search results will also include either a wheelchair icon (accessible) or a wheelchair icon that’s crossed out (inaccessible). Further details also cover whether or not a building has accessible seating, restrooms, or parking. Live View’s expansion into more regions kicks off sometime next week for both Android and iOS. While advanced EV search options and Accessible Places are available now worldwide, EV searches are limited to countries where charging stations are available.
