The Trump administration has reached out to Apple directly to get Apple Maps changed now from Lake Ontario to "Lake America." It's going to happen, just on Apple's schedule.

The battle for Lake Ontario has taken another step in President Trump's favor. In an international spat over trade with Canada, U.S. President Trump declared that the name of Lake Ontario should instead be Lake America.

So far, this has resulted in overt gestures such as Canada putting up a new sign near the lake, insisting it is Lake Ontario "Now and Always." Somehow, the online change has taken longer, but Apple is about to catch up, reports Reuters.

Trump announced on Thursday the name change for the smallest of the five Great Lakes. After the formal change in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, Google said on Saturday that it will be updating Google Maps to match.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Monday that Trump has spoken to Apple about changing the name of the lake. At the time, Burgum expected the change to happen "soon."

As of 11:30 AM ET on August 31, Apple Maps has yet to give the lake the new name. Users searching for "Lake Ontario" still see a result for the same name, but it should change to "Lake America" soon.

For the second time in this administration's tenure, it will be a change that will slowly push through Apple's systems. Eventually it will show "Lake America" across all of the elements of Apple Maps, at least for U.S. users.

In Google's implementation, U.S. users will see "Lake America", those in Canada will still see "Lake Ontario," and the rest of the world will see the label "Lake Ontario (Lake America)."

Apple will likely do the same thing, based on how mapping databases work.

Remapping history

While the current battle is a tit-for-tat element of an ongoing trade war, it's also not the first time Apple Maps had to be updated.

In January 2025, after President Trump took office, he signed an executive order changing multiple place names inside and outside the United States. This included the controversial change from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Apple and Google eventually updated their respective mapping apps after GNIS made its official change.

The changes are purely political in nature, and only truly affect the United States. No matter how many changes the U.S. makes to its official names for locations, it can't prevent others from keeping the old name in use.

Outside of the United States, it'll still be Lake Ontario.