Google Maps on Thursday received an update for its users in India that is allowing them to save and share their home addresses with Plus Codes. The update will help users get precise digital addresses of their residences that they can use for faster deliveries of their food, medicines, and parcels, without sharing any landmarks or voice instructions. Addresses with Plus Codes can also be shared with people for easy navigation. Plus Codes are free, open-sourced digital addresses that are meant to provide accurate location details.
Using the latest update, you can now generate a Plus Code for your home address through Google Maps. The app will show you a new Use your current location option when saving a Home location that will use your phone’s location to generate a Plus Code. Once saved, the home location with the generated Plus Code can be shared directly from the Saved tab on Google Maps.
In case you already have a location saved as your Home on Google Maps, you will see a Plus Code alongside for precise details.
You can simply copy the Plus Code and paste it in your chat to provide precise location details of your home location to anyone you want. The alphanumeric code will notably not include any of your personal details, such as your name and email ID. Your home’s address is also saved in your private Google Maps profile and is not available for public access as a nearby place on the app. Moreover, you can edit or remove your home address with Plus Code directly from Google Maps.
Google Maps has initially rolled out the new experience for Android users. It will, however, also be available to iOS users in the coming days.
While announcing the update, Google said that the India-first feature is designed to provide accurate home addresses through Google Maps.
Google said that it initially piloted the feature in India a month ago. Over 300,000 users in the country are already using it for their home addresses, the company said.
“We are looking forward to expanding to more types of places, and are actively looking for opportunities to partner with e-commerce, logistics, and delivery companies, to scale up the experience to more people across the world,” said Amanda Bishop, Product Manager, Google Maps, in a prepared statement.
In 2015, Google introduced Plus Codes as a solution to locate ‘hard to find’ places around the globe. The technology was launched in India in March 2018.
Google Maps in 2020 introduced the ability to let users share their current location using Plus Codes by tapping the blue dot on the app.