The physical world is dynamic, multi-dimensional, and constantly in motion— That's why digital maps are evolving from simple navigational utilities into contextual interfaces that dynamically reflect the real world.
Today, we’re excited to announce major product updates designed to enhance the reality-to-screen experience to help your customers make even more accurate place decisions:
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Maps 3D SDKs for Android and iOS (General Availability): to bring immersive, end-to-end mapping experiences directly to mobile apps.
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Places UI Kit Pro for iOS (General Availability): to embed Google’s trusted live busyness, popular times, and custom action buttons natively into your conversion funnel.
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Contextual styling (General Availability): to programmatically adapt map themes and landmark prominence based on environmental triggers without page reloads.
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Cloud-based maps styling (General Availability): Automate and scale custom map design. Use code-based management and AI assistance to translate natural language prompts and design systems directly into production-ready JSON themes across all map types.
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Immersive area tours in AI Studio: to easily prompt your way through your own immersive maps experience build.
With these latest offerings, you can now reduce visual friction, deliver rich real-world context, and keep high-intent users engaged directly inside your experience.
Bring rich, immersive mapping experiences natively to your mobile apps
Whether your users are previewing travel destinations, tracking real-time delivery routes, or engaging in rich, photorealistic spatial planning, they expect an immersive, fluid visual experience. Our Maps 3D SDKs for Android and iOS seamlessly bring Google’s immersive mapping experience natively to mobile—built from the ground up with first-class Kotlin and SwiftUI support for modern native developer workflows.
With this GA release, you can bring native mobile applications to life using custom visualizations, multidimensional interactivity, and fluid camera animations—delivering the exact perspective, detail, and context your users need. Effortlessly integrate 3D models and style scenes, complete with Google’s rich map labeling and POI detail, configurable altitude modes, and custom, collision-aware markers that enhance local search discovery. Bringing together Google’s abstract basemap, high-fidelity 3D imagery, contextual place detail, and web and native mobile availability, 3D Maps provides the comprehensive, native mapping solution that scales across diverse use cases and devices.
Top real estate platform Realtor.com built FlyAround using 3D Maps across web and mobile web views. According to Realtor.com, this visual realism drove a 2x increase in mobile map engagement. This case study demonstrates how spatial context and immersive exploration builds user confidence during high-consideration decisions.
Get started today with Maps 3D SDK for Android and iOS.
Maps 3D SDKs bring photorealistic 3D imagery, custom markers and polylines, and out-of-the-box animations natively to mobile apps on iOS and Android.
Guide users through cinematic, AI-directed virtual tours
When evaluating a resort, venue, or commercial property, users want a cohesive sense of how spaces connect rather than clicking through disjointed photo carousels. However, building custom 3D flight paths from scratch has traditionally required complex coordinate math and custom animation engines.
Our new immersive area tours solution in Google AI Studio simplifies this process, giving you an easier path to prototype and get started on building cinematic, virtual journeys.
This applet—using 3D Maps and Places UI Kit—allows you to rapidly prototype AI-driven web apps featuring interactive maps with integrated place data. Using an intuitive chat interface, you can effortlessly remix starting frameworks without direct coding, enabling you to build and share cinematic, custom spatial tours in minutes.
Build a virtual tour with the open-source Immersive area tours applet in Google AI Studio.
Google AI Studio’s open-source Immersive area tours applet lets you rapidly prototype a cinematic, multi-stop 3D virtual tour without manual coordinate scripting.
Help users make real-time decisions with live crowd signals
An address helps users identify a specific location, but not what they should expect when they arrive
Place Details in Places UI Kit for iOS now includes popular times and live busyness, allowing users to view busy times hour by hour, current activity, as well as typical wait times (where available). Popular times and live busyness are available in both Places UI Kit Essentials and Pro.
With Places UI Kit Pro, you can also control the action buttons, including removing the defaults or adding your own actions, such as "Book now" or "Join waitlist," so users can engage with place actions without leaving your app.
To incorporate these new features, add “popularTimes” to your Place Details content configuration.
Get started today with Places UI Kit for iOS to build live crowd signals, or explore the advanced button configurations in the Places UI Kit Pro tier.
Places UI Kit for iOS embeds rich Place Details, live busyness, and popular times directly into your native conversion flow.
Dynamically adjust your maps to the physical world
When a map interface remains fixed regardless of changing surroundings, it can feel disconnected from the user’s real-world environment.
With Contextual Styling for Cloud-based Maps Styling, your map can become a more responsive, living canvas. With this new feature, you can programmatically adjust color palettes, toggle layer visibility, and highlight specific landmarks under a single Map ID—all without reloading the map. Supported across our core map features, Contextual Styling provides seamless visual consistency across roadmap, satellite, hybrid, terrain, and navigation modes, immersing users in their physical context.
Get started today with Contextual Styling.
Contextual Styling programmatically updates map color palettes and highlights landmarks under a single Map ID without refreshing the view.
Scale bespoke map styling with code and AI automation
For organizations managing bespoke map styles across dozens of regional sub-brands or enterprise applications, updating map configurations through manual UI consoles slows down release cycles and increases the risk of human error.
With expanded Cloud-based maps styling across all map types and modes, you can customize over 100 map features across 2D, 3D, Satellite, Hybrid, and Terrain views, complete with Light and Dark modes. Combined with code-based management and AI-assisted design, teams can turn natural language prompts and brand guidelines directly into production-ready JSON styles.
Start styling today in Cloud-based maps styling with Map Management API.
Cloud-based maps styling and the Map Management API enable automated, programmatic styling workflows across 2D, 3D, and satellite basemaps.
Get started today
Google’s 3D Maps with contextual place data gives users the spatial depth and context they need to make confident decisions.
The digital map has evolved into an immersive experience layer that directly shapes customer decisions—whether exploring a new neighborhood to buy a first home, planning a vacation, or checking the wait before heading out. By combining 3D visualizations, live crowd signals, and responsive styling, you can give your users the experience they need to explore, evaluate, and act with confidence.
Try these new capabilities today:
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Maps 3D SDKs (Android & iOS): Bring 3D Maps natively to your mobile apps with the developer documentation for Android and iOS, as well as web.
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Places UI Kit Pro: Display live popular times and busyness signals by integrating Places UI Kit Pro for iOS.
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Immersive Area Tours: Start prototyping and remixing your own interactive map demos using our open-source template on AI Studio.
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Developer Community: Share what you build and connect with peers in the Google Maps Platform Developer Community on Discord.
