You Can Now Better Match Your Google Maps Icon to Your Real Car

Google Maps is one of the best tools for navigating from A to B, whether you’re walking, cycling, or driving a car. And if you’re doing the latter, you now have more car icons and colors to choose from to represent your vehicle.

Google Maps Adds a Range of New Car Icons

When using Google Maps for directions while driving, the default icon representing you and your vehicle on the map is a blue arrow. However, there are other options available (if you know where to look), and Google has now added even more options.

For several years, Google Maps has offered you the chance to switch from the default blue arrow to one of three car icons: a red sedan, a green pickup truck, or a yellow SUV. These icons are pretty basic though, and the colors are set in stone.

However, a new update has added five new car icons (which are much prettier and more detailed), available in eight different colors. The colors are white, black, gray, red, blue, yellow, green, and purple.

This set of options means that you should be able to choose a close match for your own car. While the model and shade of color may not be an exact match to your own vehicle, it should be close enough to make Google Maps feel more personal to you.

There are several ways to change the car icon in Google Maps, but you end up at the same screen regardless:

• Before starting a journey, you can tap the sliders to open the Trip Options menu, then tap Vehicle icon while navigating.
• During a journey, you can tap the journey bar underneath the map, then tap Vehicle icon.
• At the start of or during a journey, you can tap the icon itself on the map to go straight to the Choose vehicle icon options.

A Fun Feature to Make Driving More Colorful

The option to choose a car icon that more closely resembles your own vehicle is a fun frivolity that isn’t going to change your world. However, it could help to make long car journeys at least a little more colorful.

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Google has obviously been inspired by Waze here, with the latter offering a broad range of vehicle icons. Why it has taken Google 12 years (as it acquired Waze in 2013) to bring more to Maps is a mystery though. Still, it’s better late than never.