We're changing how Google Maps are previewed in the Designer

We were recently contacted by the Google Maps API team, and were unfortunately told that showing live Google Maps previews inside of the Designer would only comply with their Terms of Service if we upgraded to a very expensive Premium level plan, which is not financially feasible for us. In order to stay within the limits of the Google Maps API Standard Plan, Webflow will soon stop rendering map previews when you’re logged in to the Webflow Designer - instead showing a placeholder of the same size in the place where the map will render after publishing.

Here are some examples of maps before and after this change:

Inline Map (Before)

Inline Map (After)

Styled Background Map (Before)

Styled Background Map (After)

We realize that this is not the ideal way that maps should work inside the Designer. However, we have to make this change very quickly to comply with Google’s request - once we have more time in our development schedule, we’ll create a more robust solution that brings back map previews again.

Note that this does not affect maps displayed on published sites or sites access via the client Editor - maps should continue rendering there as before.

This change should go live on Friday, March 31st.

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Thanks for the heads up!

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Thats a good sign! Webflow is getting big enough for Google to notice your mapping calls! :slight_smile:

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It’s not really a good sign. How are we going to check the map position and get the zoom right in the designer? The Toggled preview also does not show the map. Please can @cyberdave investigate any workaround with Google please. :worried:

if you get the embed code from google maps and use a custom code component then it still shows up in the designer. And you get more options too.

Hang on minute… @cyberdave @vincent Is this a April Fool’s joke? Ah, you guys :wink:

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Aah this is too bad. This way we can not determine the location of the marker, for example with styled background maps. :cry:

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