AI-generated Key Takeaways

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• Customize the appearance of map features like roads, buildings, and points of interest by adjusting their color, visibility, and stroke.

• Map features inherit styles from their parent features, allowing for broad or granular customization.

• Specific styling options vary based on the feature type, for instance, polygons and polylines offer fill and stroke controls while icons and text labels have color options.

• Control the visibility of map features to show or hide specific elements on your map for different purposes.

• A hierarchy of map features organizes customization options, ranging from broad categories like "Points of Interest" to specific features like "Restaurant" or "Beach".

The map features you can customize are arranged in a hierarchy, and each mapfeature has one or more style elements that you can customize. Most top-levelfeatures have one or more child map features. You have several options whencustomizing map styles:

• Inherit from the base map style: If you don't customize a style elementfor a map feature, it inherits the default style from the base map.

• Inherit from parents: Customize a style element on a parent map feature,to have all un-customized child map features below inherit the styles fromtheir parent.

• Override the parent style: Customize a style element on a child mapfeature to override the parent style for that element.

• Customize zoom levels: For some map features, you can customize styleelements for different zoom levels. For details, seeStyle zoomlevels.

What you can style for each map feature

Map features can have one or more of the following style elements that you cancustomize, depending on the type of map feature:

• Visibility: Whether to show or hide this feature on the map.

• Fill color: Fill color for polygons and polylines.

• Stroke color: Outline color for polygons and polylines.

• Stroke width: Thickness of the outline for polygons and polylines.Results may vary depending on the zoom level. If you don't want an outline,set the Stroke color to be the same as the Fill color, or set the Strokewidth to 0.

• Icon color: Fill color for the icons.

• Text fill color: Fill color for text labels.

• Text stroke color: Outline color for text labels.

Note: Stroke color and Stroke width customizations are not available for allmap features. For details, seePolygons and Polylines.

Map feature visibility

When you hide map features or make them transparent, you may expose boundaryinaccuracies. Map feature boundaries are not always precise, but are adjusted tolook correct when all layers are visible. To learn more about how map layersaffect each other, seeManage styles that overlap.

There are two ways to show or hide map features: visibility and opacity.

Visibility

To either display or hide a map feature on your map, use theVisibilitystyle element. For more details, seeFilter which map features to display.

Note: Not all map features are shown on the map at all zoom levels. To see themap feature displayed or hidden, you may need to zoom in or out.

Opacity

You can also make a map feature transparent by adjusting the opacity of thefollowing style elements: Fill color, Stroke color, Text fill color, and Textstroke color.

When you adjust the opacity of a map feature, its appearance depends on the mapfeatures underneath. To avoid unexpected style changes, set a custom style forall overlapping features.

Note: Opacity is not available for all map features.

Polygons and Polylines

For map feature types that are represented with a shape, such as Beach, Country,and Town square, or a line, such as Railway track, Highway, and Trail, you cantypically style the following elements: Visibility, Fill color, Stroke color,and Stroke width.

Polygon styling customization example - forReservation feature type

Polyline styling customization example - forHighway feature type

Stroke color and Stroke width customizations arenot available for thefollowing map features:

• Political map features: Their style conveys meaning on the map, suchas indicating the type of territory. The political map features areCountry,Border,State or province, andSublocality.

• 3D style buildings.

Icons and Text Labels

For map feature types that are fully or partially represented with a label, suchas Point of interest or Transportation, you can usually style the followingelements: Visibility, Icon color, Text fill color, and Text stroke color.

Label text and icon styling customizations example

Map feature hierarchy

These tables for the top level map features show what child map features areavailable under each.

Point of interest
Emergency	Fire Hospital Pharmacy Police
Entertainment	Arts Casino Cinema Historic Museum Theme park Tourist attraction
Food and drink	Bar Cafe Restaurant Winery
Landmark
Lodging
Recreation	Beach Boating Fishing Golf course Hot spring Nature reserve Park Peak Sports complex Sports field Trailhead Zoo
Retail	Grocery Shopping
Service	ATM Bank Car rental EV charging Gas station Parking lot Post office Rest stop Restroom
Transit	Airport
Other	Bridge Cemetery Government Library Military Place of worship School Town square

Political
Country
Border
Reservation
State or province
City
Sublocality
Neighborhood
Land parcel

Infrastructure
* Road detail map features are only available on Google Maps Platform products that have road level details enabled. For more information, seeRoad level details for Google Maps Platform.
Building	Commercial
Business corridor
Road network	No traffic	Pedestrian mall
		Trail	Paved Unpaved
	Parking aisle
	Ramp
	Road shield
	Road sign
	Road	Arterial Highway Local No outlet
	Road detail*	Surface Crosswalk Sidewalk Intersection Direction arrow
Railway track	Commercial Commuter
Transit station	Bicycle share
	Bus station
	Ferry terminal
	Funicular station
	Gondola station
	Monorail
	Rail station	Subway station Tram station
Urban area

Natural
† Land cover map features are rough approximations based on satellite imagery colors and may not accurately reflect real-world conditions.
Continent
Archipelago
Island
Land	Land cover†	Crops Dry crops Forest Ice Sand Shrub Tundra
Water	Ocean Lake River Other
Base