Google Data

Today we are launching the Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11, which includes bitcode support, new events and some features previously available only in the Android SDK.

Bitcode is an intermediate representation of your app that is uploaded to the Apple Store. With this abstraction, Apple can optimize for specific target devices at provisioning time.

The Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 also introduces two new events: didLongPressInfoWindowOfMarker and didCloseInfoWindowOfMarker. The long press event takes advantage of iOS long-touch as another way for users to interact with Maps SDK for iOS enabled apps. The close event is particularly useful if you wish to programmatically zoom back out on the map after the user has looked at the detail associated with a particular marker.

We have also added start and finish rendering events to the GMSMapViewDelegate and GMSPanoramaViewDelegate protocols. The start rendering events are triggered when tiles have just been requested or labels have just started rendering. The finish events are triggered on rendering completion for tiles and StreetView panoramas, respectively.

Finish events can be used in conjunction with an activity indicator to accurately represent when a map has finished rendering. The sample code below shows how to include this functionality. (We’ve also included SVProgressHUD in the sample below to improve the user experience, but it is not required)

import UIKit
import GoogleMaps

class MapRenderingViewController: UIViewController {
  @IBOutlet var mapView: GMSMapView!

  override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    mapView.delegate = self
  }

  // MARK: - GMSMapViewDelegate

  func mapViewDidStartTileRendering(mapView: GMSMapView!) {
    SVProgressHUD.showWithStatus("Loading tiles")
  }

  func mapViewDidFinishTileRendering(mapView: GMSMapView!) {
    SVProgressHUD.dismiss()
  }
}

Lastly, the Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 offers new features & bugfixes we think you'll find useful, including:

• Setting ground overlay opacity with an alpha value
• Polygon hole support
• Increased camera tilt range at high zoom
• Additional Places autocomplete functionality

Take a look at our release notes and update to Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 today.

Posted by Megan Boundey, Product Manager, Google Maps Mobile APIs