One of the common requests we get from our developer community is the ability to customize styling on mobile maps. Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of data-driven styling across platforms, including data-driven styling for boundaries on iOS and Android and data-driven styling for datasets for the Maps JavaScript API, iOS, and Android.   

This release, which builds upon our I/O launch from last year, enables you to build context-rich maps across all platforms to engage users. With data-driven styling for boundaries, you can display key visual information using the same boundaries and polygons used in Google Maps. With data-driven styling for datasets, you can visualize and style your own geospatial data as points, lines and polygons on a map to create interactive and insightful visual experiences.

Easily style your maps to convey key information to your users

Use data-driven styling to easily style your own proprietary tabular and geospatial data client-side, access Google administrative boundaries and customize their appearance in your application, and utilize the same boundaries and polygons used in Google Maps that your users are familiar with. You can also style and visualize your geospatial data in GeoJSON, CSV and KML formats as points, lines and polygons on a map using data-driven styling for datasets. 

With these new tools, you can create compelling visualizations and provide additional context and insight to your users, helping them make more informed decisions and save time.

Simplify your development process

One of the benefits of using data-driven styling is that you don’t need to source and maintain the boundary data.  Google curates, updates and manages this data, so you can save development time and resources.  You can also easily update a dataset without needing a new ID or making changes to the client side code, as well as a more intuitive error handling experience when creating or updating a dataset, and improved accessibility support.

Ways to use data-driven styling in your industry

Data-driven styling is a powerful tool for enhancing your application’s user experience. Here are just a few examples by industry:

• Real estate and travel: Provide useful context when users search for a property or hotel by helping them understand whether the listing is in their desired area. Highlight local attractions to help users make an informed decision about where to rent, buy or stay.

• Retail: Optimize site selection, analyze customer demographics and visualize supply chain data. 

• Government and educational organizations: Create a choropleth map to visualize demographic data by country, state or other administrative levels. 

• News and Media: Create data-driven stories with interactive maps that engage audiences.

• Logistics and transportation: Analyze transportation patterns, visualize traffic data and improve routing algorithms.

With this launch, Google Maps Platform offers an even more extensive set of products and features to style and customize your maps across platforms. Just last year, we launched the next generation of Cloud-based Maps Styling, enabling you to style over a hundred map elements on the basemap, and Advanced Markers, allowing you to customize your markers. Together, these features provide maximum control and flexibility to customize your maps and build compelling and consistent experiences for your users across mobile and web. 

Ready to get started?

You can get started today with data-driven styling without any custom code or in-house expertise. Visit the following sections of our documentation to get started:

Data-driven styling for boundaries

• JavaScript

• iOS

• Android

Data-driven styling for datasets

• JavaScript

• iOS

• Android

We’ll be sharing even more details on how to use these customization and styling features to take your mapping experiences to the next level, so stay tuned.

We can’t wait to see what you build!