Google Maps and Waze are getting a host of essential updates for drivers, including new tools to help you find parking and notifications for new kinds of traffic enforcement.
The best upgrade for drivers by far is coming to Google Maps, as it’ll now offer more useful directions to your destination by telling you where you can park. This will include lighting up the location on your map, highlighting where the entrance to its parking lot is, and showing you nearby parking lots that you can easily navigate to.
This would have been so helpful on my recent vacation, as navigating some of the towns and cities I visited was a nightmare. Instead of the stress of desperately searching for parking while dodging traffic restrictions and road hazards, I could have simply followed Google Maps. So I’ll be looking out for this as it rolls out to Android and iOS, cars with Google Built-in, Android Auto, and Apple CarPlay in the coming weeks.
The other improvement to Maps is its community incident reporting feature. The feature is still there, but thanks to the larger reporting icons, it’ll now be easier to report construction work, lane closures, and other obstructions – and this is rolling out globally right now.
Go your own Waze
If you instead rely on Waze, Google’s other maps service isn’t missing out on upgrades.
On the community reporting side of things, Waze is adding alerts for new speed and traffic enforcement camera types – such as those that detect if you’re wearing a seatbelt, speeding, running a red light, or using a lane you shouldn’t be – which are added by community members using of real world road information and publicly available data from local authorities.
Additionally, you’ll see the option to share real-time traffic information with friends in Waze based on events that are happening. For example, if a concert or sporting event is happening near a location you’ve saved or recently traveled to, Waze will not only notify you how traffic is being impacted and if there are road closures, but it will also let you share these details with your friends and family to help with their journey. Both this and the above Waze feature are rolling out to Android and iOS globally now.
Lastly, Waze will bring lock-screen navigation – including turn-by-turn directions and real-time traffic updates – to Android later this month. The same feature is coming to iOS, though we’re only told it’s dropping in the Fall (so September, October, or November).