Overview

Select platform: Android iOS JavaScript Web Service

Before you begin: Before you start using the Places SDK for iOS, you need a project with a billing account and the Places API enabled. We recommend creating multiple Project Owners and Billing Administrators, so that you'll always have someone with these roles available to your team. To learn more, see Set up in Cloud Console.

Introduction

The Places SDK for iOS lets you build location-aware apps that respond contextually to the local businesses and other places near the device. This means you can build rich apps based on places that mean something to the user.

Concepts

A place is defined as a physical space that has a name. Another way of thinking about a place is that it's anything you can find on a map. Examples include local businesses, points of interest, and geographic locations. In the API, a place is represented by the GMSPlace Class Reference. It includes information such as the name of the place and its address, geographical location, place ID, phone number, place type, website URL, and more.

Note: Whenever your app displays information about places sourced from the Places SDK for iOS, the app must also show all relevant attributions that are returned by the API. See the documentation on displaying attributions.

Choose your version of the SDK

Places SDK for iOS version 8.5.0 supports two SDK versions: the existing Places SDK for iOS and Places SDK for iOS (New), the next generation of the SDK.

Your first task is to decide which SDK to use. This is true if you are a new customer or an existing customer already using the SDK. To learn the key differences between the two SDK versions, see Choose your SDK version.

Pricing for each SDK version

Your chosen version of the SDK controls pricing for Text Search. Places SDK for iOS (New) supports a simplified pricing model so that you only pay for the data that you use. For detailed pricing information for both SDKs, see Usage and Billing.

Note: The pricing for Place Details, Place Autocomplete, Photos, and Current Place is the same for both SDKs.

API overview

Help your customers explore where they are and what's around them:

• Place Details returns information about places, including the place's name and address, the geographical location specified as latitude and longitude coordinates, the type of place (such as night club, pet store, museum), and more.
• Current Place returns a list of places where the user's device is last known to be located along with an indication of the relative likelihood for each place.
• Place Autocomplete automatically fills in the name and/or address of a place as users type.
• Place Photos returns high-quality images of a place.
• Place IDs stores the unique ID for one or more places for retrieval of place information on demand.
• Text Search returns information about a set of places based a text search.

Other highlights of the API include:

• Accurate place detection at low power with Wi-Fi scan.
• On-device caching: Most requests to the Places SDK for iOS may involve a round trip to a Google server, but you can also cache data locally for 30 days.

Policies and terms

All applications that use the Places SDK for iOS must adhere to the requirements described in the Google Maps Platform Terms of Service, and Displaying Attributions.