Google Maps recently became the third app to hit 10 billion installs on Android devices after Play services and YouTube. With the holiday season fast approaching, now Google is adding a few handy new tools to one of its most useful apps in order to help billions of users stay safe, plan ahead, and have the perfect holiday with friends and family.

With lockdown restrictions slowly being removed worldwide, people are excited and looking forward to this year’s festivities. Google's busyness feature is now expanding to help you identify which parts of town are the busiest at any point in time. No one is a fan of crowds, especially with Covid-19 still in play, so this feature will let you know of any neighborhoods that you might want to avoid. Alternatively, if you're up for partying, it's a good way to see which areas are the most lively.

Thanks to the new Area Busyness feature, you can tap on a neighborhood to see how busy it is at different times of the day, along with the restaurants, shops, and other places within it. The upgraded tool will arrive on Android and iOS in time for the holidays.

To help people navigate inside the most confusing buildings of all, the Directory tab in Google Maps is being expanded for things like airports, train stations, and shopping malls. A sweet little addition here is categories to help you find exactly what you want in a flash. For instance, inside an Airport, you will get categories like Lounges, Transportation, Airlines, Food & Drinks, Shopping, ATMs, etc. As you'd expect, you'll also find info about each listing's rating, opening times, and exactly where you can find it.

The next tool is probably the most exciting of all. Called “pickup with Google Maps,” you can make an order from a retail store, track your order status, share your ETA, and let the store know you've arrived, all from within the app. Currently, you can place orders at stores like Fred Meyers, Kroger, Fry’s, Ralphs, and Marianos. From today, pickup with Google Maps is available in 2,000 locations across 30 US states. According to Google, users don't usually have to wait more than five minutes for their groceries once they arrive in the store, so you could save a ton of time.

Google is also rolling out more detailed review options so users can add more depth to listings about delivery options, curbside pickup, outdoor seating, and price per person.

To help us plan our shopping trips even better, the search giant also published some holiday trends based on Google Maps data. These include the busiest and least busy times to visit shopping malls, post offices, salons, and airports. As per the data, grocery stores across the U.S. get more crowds around 1 PM on Sunday but the best time to visit would be on Thursdays around 8 PM.

For gift shopping, around 1 PM on Saturday attracts the most people while it's easier to shop around 8 PM on Tuesdays when it's not so busy. If you'd like to ship some presents to friends or family, the ideal time to visit a post office would be around 2 PM on Saturday. Similarly, the best time to visit a salon would be either Monday or Tuesday around 7 PM. Airports across the U.S are most hectic on Saturday at noon but things will have subsided by 9 PM on the same day.

When it comes to takeaways, Americans order more Chinese food than any other cuisine during the holiday season. Interestingly, many people in New York and Los Angeles opt for Chinese on December 25 while they prefer pizza on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and New Year.