Google Maps Gets New Reservation Tab, Updated Timeline Feature; Live View Rolling Out in Beta

Google Maps has now introduced a new tool that allows users to see their upcoming flight and hotel reservations while travelling. The new reservations tab can be spotted in the ‘Your Place' section. It is also expanding the availability of Live View feature that uses AR to amp up the navigation experience. There's also the addition of a new updated Timeline feature that essentially lets you make a list of places to share with your friends and family to help them plan their travel better.

Starting with the new reservations feature, Google Maps will let you now see your flight and hotel reservations in one place. To find this new Reservations Tab, click on the three grey lines at the top left corner of your screen > Select Your Places > hit on the Reservations Tab, and you'll be able to see all the upcoming trips. Selecting on one trip will pull up your reservations like flight timings and hotel bookings for the trip. This feature works offline as well, and Google says that it is coming to Android and iOS both in the coming weeks.

After announcing it at I/O 2019, Google made the Live View feature available to Pixel phones globally in May. Now, the company is expanding the beta to Android and iOS devices that support ARCore and ARKit starting this week. This feature lets you use your phone's camera during navigation, which overlays augmented reality (AR) arrows in the world around you, to help guide you to your destination. This works when you select ‘Walking' as the preferred method of travel in Google Maps. This feature was being with Local Guides and Pixel community over the past few months, and it's now finally being trickled down to all Android and iOS users.

It has also introduced a new updated Timeline feature that not only lets you see all the places you visited in the past, it also divides them into categories like restaurants, shops, attractions, hotels, and airports. You can then export the places you loved into a customised list, make notes about exactly what you liked (like the great picnic spot by the Louvre), and share that list with friends and family. The updated Timeline feature will be available to all Android users in the coming weeks. There is no word on when this updated feature will be introduced on iOS devices.