Reference
Visit planner — turning a shortlist into a route
Once a shortlist holds more than two or three entries, planning a single trip that touches all of them turns into its own logic puzzle. The visit planner solves that puzzle for you: hand it the stops, get back a route.
Where to find it
Open the shortlist drawer and tap Plan visit. A dialog appears with your shortlist pre-selected. Uncheck rows you do not want on this trip. Pick a starting point — current location, an airport, or any address you type in — and submit.
How it works
The planner takes between 2 and 7 stops. It orders them to minimize total driving distance from the starting point. The algorithm is nearest-neighbour, not a globally optimal tour, but on trips this small it usually lands within a few kilometres of optimal.
Output
- An ordered list of stops with rough drive time between each pair.
- A coloured route drawn on the map.
- A "send to Google Maps" link that opens the route in directions, ready to follow.
- A GPX file that imports cleanly into most car-navigation apps.
The order is a suggestion, not a verdict. Drag a stop up or down in the list and the route on the map redraws, with the drive times recalculated.
What to keep in mind
The planner assumes one driver. There is no multi-day splitter today. If the route is too long for a single day, you eyeball it and split manually.
Public transit is not modelled. For a train trip, use the planner only for the macro shape of the route and turn to a national train booking tool for the actual schedules.
Frequently asked
Can I save a planned route for later?
Not as a named saved route. But the URL you get when the route generates encodes the stops and the order — bookmark that URL and you have the route.
What if I want to walk between stops?
The route geometry assumes a car. You can still use the stop list as a checklist on foot; the drive-time numbers just will not match reality.
Why is the start point pre-filled with my browser location?
On first use we ask once. If you allowed it, the field defaults to wherever you are; otherwise it stays empty and you type the city or address yourself.
Can two of us plan from different starting points?
Run the planner twice with two different start points and you get two routes. A single "two-driver convergence" planner does not exist.
Verified · 2026-05-26