Launch the Windows Maps app

Learn how to launch the Windows Maps app from your app. This topic describes the bingmaps:, ms-drive-to:, ms-walk-to:, and ms-settings: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes. Use these URI schemes to launch the Windows Maps app to specific maps, directions, and search results or to download Windows Maps offline maps from the Settings app.

Tip To learn more about launching the Windows Maps app from your app, download the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) map sample from the Windows-universal-samples repo on GitHub.

Introducing URIs

URI schemes let you open apps by clicking hyperlinks (or programmatically, in your app). Just as you can start a new email using mailto: or open a web browser using http:, you can open the Windows maps app using bingmaps:, ms-drive-to:, and ms-walk-to:.

• The bingmaps: URI provides maps for locations, search results, directions, and traffic.
• The ms-drive-to: URI provides turn-by-turn driving directions from your current location.
• The ms-walk-to: URI provides turn-by-turn walking directions from your current location.

For example, the following URI opens the Windows Maps app and displays a map centered over New York City.

<bingmaps:?cp=40.726966~-74.006076>

Here is a description of the URI scheme:

bingmaps:?query

In this URI scheme, query is a series of parameter name/value pairs:

&param1=value1&param2=value2 …

For a full list of the available parameters, see the bingmaps:, ms-drive-to:, and ms-walk-to: parameter reference. There are also examples later in this topic.

Launch a URI from your app

To launch the Windows Maps app from your app, call the LaunchUriAsync method with a bingmaps:, ms-drive-to:, or ms-walk-to: URI. The following example launches the same URI from the previous example. For more info about launching apps via URI, see Launch the default app for a URI.

// Center on New York City
var uriNewYork = new Uri(@"bingmaps:?cp=40.726966~-74.006076");

// Launch the Windows Maps app
var launcherOptions = new Windows.System.LauncherOptions();
launcherOptions.TargetApplicationPackageFamilyName = "Microsoft.WindowsMaps_8wekyb3d8bbwe";
var success = await Windows.System.Launcher.LaunchUriAsync(uriNewYork, launcherOptions);

In this example, the LauncherOptions class is used to help ensure the Windows Maps app is launched.

Display known locations

There are many options to control which part of the map to show. You can use the cp (center point) parameter with either the rad (radius) or the lvl (zoom level) parameters to show a location and choose how close to zoom in to it. When you use the cp parameter, you can also specify a hdg (heading) and pit (pitch) to control what direction to look. Another method is to use the bb (bounding box) parameter to provide the maximum south, east, north, and west coordinates of the area you want to show.

To control the type of view, use the sty (style) and ss (Streetside) parameters. The sty parameter lets you switch between road and aerial views. The ss parameter puts the map into a Streetside view. For more info about these and other parameters, see the bingmaps: parameter reference.

Display search results

When searching for places using the q parameter, we recommend making the terms as specific as possible and using the cp, bb, or where parameters to specify a search location. If you do not specify a search location and the user's current location isn't available, the search may not return meaningful results. Search results are displayed in the most appropriate map view. For more info about these and other parameters, see the bingmaps: parameter reference.

Display multiple points

Use the collection parameter to show a custom set of points on the map. If there is more than one point, a list of points is displayed. There can be up to 25 points in a collection and they are listed in the order provided. The collection takes precedence over search and directions requests. For more info about this parameter and others, see the bingmaps: parameter reference.

Display directions and traffic

You can display directions between two points using the rtp parameter; those points can be either addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates. Use the trfc parameter to show traffic information. To specify the type of directions: driving, walking, or transit, use the mode parameter. If mode isn't specified, directions will be provided using the user's preferred mode of transportation. For more info about these parameters and others, see the bingmaps: parameter reference.

Display turn-by-turn directions

The ms-drive-to: and ms-walk-to: URI schemes let you launch directly into a turn-by-turn view of a route. These URI schemes can only provide directions from the user's current location. If you must provide directions between points that do not include the user's current location, use the bingmaps: URI scheme as described in the previous section. For more info about these URI schemes, see the ms-drive-to: and ms-walk-to: parameter reference.

Important When the ms-drive-to: or ms-walk-to: URI schemes are launched, the Maps app will check to see if the device has ever had a GPS location fix. If it has, then the Maps app will proceed to turn-by-turn directions. If it hasn't, the app will display the route overview, as described in Display directions and traffic.

Download offline maps

The ms-settings: URI scheme lets you launch directly into a particular page in the Settings app. While the ms-settings: URI scheme doesn't launch into the Maps app, it does allow you to launch directly to the Offline Maps page in the Settings app and displays a confirmation dialog to download the offline maps used by the Maps app. The URI scheme accepts a point specified by a latitude and longitude and automatically determines if there are offline maps available for a region containing that point. If the latitude and longitude passed happen to fall within multiple download regions, the confirmation dialog will let the user pick which of those regions to download. If offline maps are not available for a region containing that point, the offline Maps page in the Settings app is displayed with an error dialog.

bingmaps: parameter reference

The syntax for each parameter in this table is shown by using Augmented Backus–Naur Form (ABNF).

ms-drive-to: parameter reference

The URI to launch a request for turn-by-turn driving directions does not need to be encoded and has the following format.

Note You don’t specify the starting point in this URI scheme. The starting point is always assumed to be the current location. If you need to specify a starting point other than the current location, see Display directions and traffic.

ms-walk-to: parameter reference

The URI to launch a request for turn-by-turn walking directions does not need to be encoded and has the following format.

Note You don’t specify the starting point in this URI scheme. The starting point is always assumed to be the current location. If you need to specify a starting point other than the current location, see Display directions and traffic.  

ms-settings: parameter reference

The syntax for maps app specific parameters for the ms-settings: URI scheme is defined below. maps-downloadmaps is specified along with the ms-settings: URI in the form of ms-settings:maps-downloadmaps? to indicate the offline maps settings page.