Apple updates Maps search to focus on essential businesses during pandemic

Apple Maps
Apple Maps (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple has updated the Maps app.
  • The update brings essential categories to the top of the search list.
  • Businesses like grocery stores and hospitals are made a priority.

Apple has brought a number of changes to its apps in order to inform or help its users during the coronavirus pandemic. The company's latest move hopes to make finding the businesses you need the most even easier.

As spotted by iPhone Ticker, the Maps has been updated with a change to the order of the categories when you bring up the search menu.

The order of categories now highlights the businesses that users might need the most during the pandemic. Categories like Hospitals, Urgent Care, Pharmacies, Groceries, and Food Delivery have been moved to the top, while other categories like Shopping Centers, Gas Stations, and Banks & ATMs have been moved to the bottom of the list.

As reported by MacRumors, Google has gone even further than Apple Maps. The Google Maps app will inform if a business is closed or has reduced hours, as well as warning a user to call a doctor before visiting a medical center.

Tapping on any of the categories will show you the closest businesses in that category to your current location. It's a small change to the Maps app, but just one more way that the company is trying to help its customers as much as possible during the crisis.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.