How to get a pink map on your iPhone

If you have ever tried to make your map match the rest of your phone, you have found the problem: the big map apps do not let you change their colours at all. Your wallpaper is pink, your widgets are pink, and the map is the same beige and grey as everyone else’s.

Here is what each option can and cannot do, and the one that gives you a genuinely pink map — on the phone and on CarPlay.

Apple Maps: no colour themes

Apple Maps has map types — Explore, Driving, Transit and Satellite — and it follows your iPhone’s light or dark appearance. That is the extent of it. There is no theme picker, no accent colour and no setting hidden in Settings → Maps that changes the palette.

Google Maps: a different car, same map

Google Maps lets you swap the navigation arrow for a little car, which is a cute touch, but the map underneath keeps Google’s colours. The styled maps you may have seen on websites — pastel, monochrome, dark blue — are built with Google’s developer tools for maps embedded in other products. They are not available in the Google Maps app.

The screen-tint trick (and why it disappoints)

iOS has an accessibility setting that tints everything: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Color Filters → Color Tint. Pick a pink hue and the map turns pink — along with your photos, your messages, your camera and every other app. It is a whole-screen filter, meant for people who need it to read comfortably, and it makes colours harder to tell apart, which is not what you want on a map. It also does nothing for CarPlay.

A map that is pink by design

GirlyMaps takes the other approach: it draws its own map. The streets, buildings and places come from OpenStreetMap, and every colour on the map — land, parks, water, major and minor roads, 3D buildings, labels, even the route line — comes from the theme you choose. That is why it can be pink without anything else on your phone changing.

There are 10 themes:

• Pink Princess — free
• Lavender Dream — free
• Peach Sorbet
• Strawberry Milk
• Dollhouse
• Mint Matcha
• Baby Blue
• Vanilla Latte
• Cherry Night
• Midnight Glam

Places get the same treatment. Instead of grey dots, cafés, nail salons, boutiques, bakeries, flower shops and gyms each have a cute 3D icon, and the chips above the map (Coffee, Beauty, Sweets, Shopping and more) show just one kind of place at a time.

How to switch themes

On the GirlyMaps map, tap the sticker button next to the search bar — it opens Map style. Tap a theme and the map repaints straight away. The free themes stay; Pro themes can be tried right there on the map, so you can see Cherry Night on your own street before deciding.