GoKawiilApple Maps in iOS 26 benefits from several new features, but the personal standout for me—Visited Places—has become a favorite for an unexpected reason.
Visited Places in Apple Maps provides location history, but I especially love it for improving search
In iOS 26, Apple gave the Maps app a new ‘Visited Places’ feature that is opt-in.
Even though the feature is built with strong user privacy protections, some users understandably will want to leave it disabled.
Here’s how the feature works, per Apple:
With Visited Places, users can allow iPhone to intelligently detect the places they visit and spend time in — like restaurants or shops — and they’ll automatically be saved to Maps. Users can search for places they’ve visited, and easily share them with family and friends. Visited Places are built with privacy in mind; they’re protected with end-to-end encryption, cannot be accessed by Apple, and can be easily removed with just a swipe.
I felt comfortable with those privacy assurances, so I turned on ‘Visited Places’ right away last summer during the iOS 26 beta.
While I assumed it would be convenient to have a record of my location history, the biggest reason I love the feature was unexpected.
By using Visited Places, my search results in Apple Maps are now far more useful than ever.
It’s pretty common that when I’m performing a Maps search, I want to navigate somewhere that has multiple locations. It could be Target, Starbucks, or even some smaller, local-owned businesses with multiple locations. And in those cases, it’s not always obvious from search results which location is which.
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