As of 27 March 2025, your Apple Maps might look a little different. Updates have been made to make Apple Maps a more honest representation of Australia’s rich Indigenous history.

You’ll now notice when you use Apple Maps a new level of detail. Apple has applied ancestral Indigenous place names across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

That means – where applicable – you’ll start to see Indigenous place names alongside the colonial ones you may be more used to seeing.

Where Indigenous names are recognised, they will now sit beside their English counterparts — as a restoration, not a replacement.

Reserves, protected areas, and Traditional Country are also being surfaced, written into the geography once more. You’ll see them not just on Maps, but throughout Apple’s native apps that use MapKit — from 'Find My' to 'Weather'.

Traditional custodians of these lands can also claim Place Cards on Apple Maps. These can be used to share knowledge, language, images, memories and let people in Australia, Aotearoa and around the world understand more about these ancestral places.

It’s a quiet but powerful update — one that honours storylines carved into Country long before roads, railways and colonial borders. It's an update that will be applied to all Apple Maps application and one that is unable to be switched.

In Australia, Apple worked in close collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, as well as language centres, Aboriginal Land Trusts, ranger groups and knowledge holders.

“We’ve had teams in Australia and New Zealand for over 40 years, and we’re thrilled to deepen our relationships here and bring new opportunities to communities across both countries,” said Alisha Johnson Wilder, Apple’s senior director of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives.

“These efforts put community first by representing Indigenous land, expanding access to education, and protecting our shared environment.”

For all of us, it’s an invitation: to learn, to listen, to look again at where we stand.

Image: Apple