1. The Ingredients
2. The Speed
3. And for our next trick: ChatGPT

Custom Google Maps

We've been working with the Google Maps API for years, and we still love it.

The Ingredients

There's the Google Maps we all know and love and then there are a few features that, combined in the right way, make customising maps super easy and quick:

1. There's a custom style file that is very quick to adjust to your colour scheme.
2. With the JS API you can add shapes, points of interest, airplane trips and callouts
3. With the Google Places API you can quickly search for and add shapes and locations

The Speed

Thanks to these, the above map took me 20 seconds to make. Here's how:

1. I typed "Thailand" in our search bar to get it to zoom and pan to the right place
2. I added a shape and had the Places API give "Thailand" its dark outline
3. I added an itinerary with three stops: the Grand Palace, Ho Chi Minh City and KL
4. I added a point of interest and typed in "Phuket" to position it and then another for the "Grand Palace"

If you hover over the points of interest you get a tooltip with more information. And of course all the other interactivity from Google Maps is there too.

And for our next trick: ChatGPT

And best of all: it is all API-powered, so you could achieve the same output with a LLM prompt like: “draw me a map showing an itinerary from the Grand Palace to Ho Chi Minh City to KL and highlight the Grand Palace and Phuket as points of interest".