Find an Interesting Spot? Share a Maps Location with Someone Else from Mac OS X

The Maps app in Mac OS X makes it simple to share locations with others, even if the location isn’t defined and just in the middle of nowhere. This is a great trick for many reasons, whether to share a nice spot you found in the city, share with your partner where you left the car at the airport, to send a friend to a great little taco cart, share the secret free parking spots off of Market Street, the location of a great viewpoint with amazing sunsets, a Geocache location, or whatever and where ever else.

Sharing locations initially works just slightly differently if it’s a labeled spot (i.e. already defined on a map) versus an unlabeled spot (i.e. that interesting old barn off the side of highway 1 in the middle of nowhere), but sharing the location is the same either way.

Sharing a Maps Location from Mac

Here’s what to do on a Mac (OS X 10.9 or newer is required):

1. From the Maps app, find the spot you want to share by locating it on the map

• For labeled spots: click on the location
• For unlabeled spots: right-click on the specific spot / location, and choose “Drop Pin”

The send Maps to iPhone option is instant, whereas the Email option launches the default mail client, Messages goes through the Mac messaging client, and the social sharing options go to their respective service like Twitter or Facebook through the web.

Once the pinned spot has been sent, it can be opened either on another Mac in the Maps app, or on any iOS device through the Maps app too. If it’s saved to an iPhone, it can then be referenced in the future as a destination through Siri’s turn-by-turn navigation directions. Of course, this trick can also go the other way as well, and users on an iPhone or iPad can also pinpoint a location on a map and send or share it with others too.

This is obviously useful for directions and normal mapping usage, but photography fans in particular may find this to be an extra great tool, because it makes sharing precise spots of their favorite shooting locations extremely easy. Have fun out there!