Here is how you can Download Offline Maps on Windows
One of the most brilliant inventions of the smartphone era has been the advent of maps, giving us the ability to navigate the world with a device that can fit in the palm of our hands. While initially, it was also necessary to have a internet connection to allow your phone to retrieve the maps and use your phone’s GPS to detect where it is and where to go, the creator of the most used maps service, Google Maps, also introduced a feature to download the map offline.
This really revolutionized navigation as there are areas where you don’t have a connection but when you have maps downloaded, you know where to go and how to get there.
Thankfully, Microsoft also added the ability to download offline maps on Windows. You won’t necessarily be using your laptop in the wild, but it is always good to know that you have this feature, in case you don’t have a smartphone on hand or it runs out of battery. Here, in this guide, we will tell you how you can use this feature,
Download Offline Maps on Windows
- Open the Settings app.
- Go to Apps section.
- From the left pane, click on Offline maps.
- On the right pane, you will see an option for Check now. Click on this.
- Click on Download maps.
- Here, it will ask you to select the area for which you want to download the map. You can click on the region and then the specific area. It will also show you the sizes of the places you want to download the map of. Click on the specific area.
- It will start downloading the map and you can see its progress in the Download maps section.
- Once it is downloaded, you can open the Windows Maps app and search for the area you downloaded. It will allow you to use basic features like search for places, navigate to a place, etc. for that area without needing an internet connection.
You can also tweak some other settings from the Offline maps settings, like choosing whether to automatically update maps, and if yes, then whether to update maps on only WLAN connections, cellular data, etc.
