Flyover, Look Around, and more

Key Takeaways

The web version of Apple Maps is a public beta and missing key features, making it less versatile than the app.
The absence of things like Favorites and Look Around shows it’s still a work in progress.
Apple is increasingly focused on services, and a web version of Apple Maps is a natural extension.

If you told an iPhone user in 2012 that Apple would eventually release a web version of Apple Maps, they probably wouldn’t believe you. Not because it doesn’t make sense — the broad accessibility of Google Maps is something any competitor should emulate — but because the launch of Apple’s navigation service in 2012 was such a disaster it didn’t seem like the company would ever pull out of its tailspin. Over a decade later, Apple Maps has come a long way. Not only is it more or less as reliable as Google’s service — it finally has a web version of its own in beta.

Why Apple chose the summer of 2024 to launch the web version of Apple Maps is anyone’s guess, but after years of pushing updates to just iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, now everyone can access the service from a browser (with some caveats). Even in beta, Apple Maps on the web feels pretty similar to the apps you might have on your phone, though it doesn’t currently support some key functionality of the mobile and desktop versions. Here’s what the web version of Apple Maps is missing.

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1 Apple Maps for the web doesn’t have favorites

The web version has no way to save or access favorite places

The Favorites section from the Apple Maps app.

Maps gained the ability to save commonly visited locations as Favorites with the release of iOS 13. Apple offers the ability to save specific locations as your home or work addresses, but favorites opened it up to any place you go to regularly, like a friend’s house, your dog’s go-to park, or the best place to watch the sunset in your neighborhood.

The ability to save favorites or access any locations you’ve previously saved in any other version of Apple Maps is completely missing from the web version of Apple Maps. In fact, any feature presumably associated with your Apple account is inaccessible because, unlike Google Maps, there’s no way to log in to the web version of Apple Maps.

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2 The web version doesn’t support custom Guides

Apple Maps doesn’t let you make guides on the web

Another feature tied to your Apple account that isn’t fully available online are Guides. Essentially custom collections of recommended locations, Guides were also introduced in iOS 13 to make using Apple Maps more of a social experience. Trusted brands like Lonely Planet could make a guide to a specific city, with restaurants or landmarks to visit, and individual users could also make a guide if they wanted to create a must-see list for a family member visiting a new city. Purely anecdotally, I haven’t found Guides to be widely used, but they’re certainly a fun idea.

Guides from brands are available on the web version of Apple Maps, but not any of the custom guides you might have previously created. Again, this mainly seems due to the decision to not tie the web version of Apple Maps to the company’s account system just yet. I would not be surprised if that changed in the future.

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3 Flyover isn’t available in the web version of Apple Maps

Not exactly a useful feature, but it’s unique

The Flyover feature in the Apple Maps app.

One of the main ways Apple differentiates Apple Maps from Google and other competitors is by taking special care with all the visual components of navigation and maps. For the most part, Apple Maps has snazzier animations and much more legible screens than Google Maps. From the beginning, animations have been a special focus.

Flyover, a feature that lets you take a virtual, aerial tour of a specific location or landmark, doesn’t serve much of a practical purpose, but it is pretty neat to look at. It simply isn’t present in the web version of Apple Maps. If I were Apple, I would probably make the same choice to ship the minimum viable map product, one that doesn’t include useless animations. But it’s interesting that one of the early defining features of Apple Maps isn’t available on the web.

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4 Apple Maps for the web doesn’t have Look Around

The Apple version of Street View isn’t available

A Look Around view of San Francisco in the Apple Maps app.

Street View is such an iconic part of Google Maps that there’s a whole community based on using it to identify locations as quickly and accurately as possible (if you’ve never played GeoGuessr, it’s surprisingly fun). Apple’s answer to street view was Look Around, an interactive, 3D, street-level view of a majority of the places the company had mapped.

Look Around still isn’t as widely available as Street View in my experience, but it’s one of the easiest ways to orient yourself before you show up to some place you haven’t been before. And it’s completely inaccessible in the web version of Apple Maps. This is a table stakes feature; it seems highly likely that Apple will have to add it in soon.

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5 Transit and bicycle directions are missing from the web version

Transit direction in the Apple Maps app.

The ability to offer driving and walking directions is an invaluable part of any map app, but if you live in a big city or are trying to save money on gas, transit and bike directions are just as critical. In my experience, Apple Maps’ transit directions have improved greatly since they were added all the way back in iOS 9.

Apple Maps for the web is completely missing all navigation options (including planning routes around EV charging or using ride-hailing services like Uber) save for driving and walking routes. It makes a certain amount of sense to include those options over transit directions, which can change on the fly and are most useful when you can receive a notification to get off at the next stop, for example. But it still feels like an oversight.

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6 Even if it’s polished, Apple Maps for the web is still unfinished

In its blog post announcing that Apple Maps was available on the web, Apple made it pretty clear that this was a beta. A public beta with the expected amount of polish, but still an unfinished product. The number of missing features certainly reflects that fact. Still, Apple is increasingly comfortable shipping the bare minimum version of a service or app and updating it over time, even parceling out the components of its yearly software updates and shipping them when they’re ready.

Odds are that Apple Maps will receive its missing features and eventually get an update on the same regular schedule as every other Apple service. Until then though, it’s an interesting expression of Apple’s interest in competing on not just the level of hardware or software, but services — just don’t expect it to replace the app on your iPhone yet.

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