Apple Maps with Multiple Stops

Apple Maps has handled routes with stops along the way since iOS 16, and it is easy to miss because nothing announces it. If you want to plan a route with several addresses on your iPhone, here is how.

Routes with stops on the iPhone

Open the Maps app and type your first destination into the search bar. Tap the blue button to bring up directions.

Then tap Add Stop — it sits under your first address — or tap straight on the map and add up to 15 stops.

To reorder the addresses, grab the three horizontal lines next to an address and drag it up or down the list. To remove one, press and hold it until the delete button appears.

Once you are happy with the stops and the order, you can still set the route profile — car, bike, walking, avoid highways — and the departure time. The app shows the total distance and how long the route will take underneath the addresses. Tap Go and the 3D turn-by-turn navigation starts with spoken directions. While you are navigating you can keep adding and removing stops, or share your arrival time with someone.

Routes with stops on a Mac

Apple Maps is on macOS too, so you can plan the same routes on a Mac or a laptop:

Open the Maps app on your Mac. Enter the first destination of your route. Click Add Stop on the right and type the next address, or pick it from the list. Up to 15 stops here as well, and you reorder them by dragging an address up or down.

Where it stops being enough

If Apple Maps is the only thing you use, this is genuinely handy — the integration with Siri and CarPlay is good, and the handoff between Mac and iPhone works.

What is not there is everything that makes route planning a work tool rather than a driving tool. Apple Maps will not optimize the order of the stops for you, so the sequence you type in is the sequence you drive. There are no time windows, no notes or attachments per stop, no way to split a set of addresses across several drivers, and no record of what happened at each one. For 15 stops on a personal trip that is fine. For a delivery round it is not.