Popular Times is one of the most useful features of Google Maps on the web. Android users have had the privilege of enjoying this feature in the mobile app for quite a few months, and now iPhone and iPad users can see how busy their favorite place is, in real-time, in Google Maps 4.27 for iOS. Aside from this feature, the free download includes the ability to quickly access addresses in the clipboard while searching and bug fixes.
The ability to see business hours has been present in the iOS app since December 2015 in the form of day-by-day and hour-by-hour charts. With today’s update, this crowd-tracking feature is now even more accurate thanks to real-time updates.
Popular Times gathers anonymized locations from other Maps users and takes into account relevant Google searches to make educated guesses as to how how busy a place is at any given moment. iOS users that have the app installed can contribute to this real-time data by enabling Location History within the app.
The updated graphs let you see the average time people spend at a location and you get to see traffic patterns in real-time. Before today, the feature would only provide an estimate of how relatively busy a place might be.
As mentioned earlier, now when you go to search for a place the app will pull up a new option for quickly pasting an address from the system clipboard.