Not knowing the parking availability at your destination can make anyone anxious. Thankfully, Google Maps is making a few additions to route overviews that give you more information about your venue at a glance.
Easily Find Parking at Your Destination
Android Policetipster Moshe came across some more information displayed in the trip overviews you see before starting navigation to a destination. This information lets you quickly check estimated gas savings for the route, your expected arrival time, and parking difficulty—I’ve wanted the ability to check this before starting navigation for ages.
I tested two venues to see how accurate the metric is. For now, it seems reasonably accurate; the venues did have easy parking spaces, though one was just an open field. You can expect the feature to be largely accurate for bigger venues like stadiums or malls. For smaller businesses and rural areas, reliability can vary.
The parking difficulty feature has been around for some time, initially launching in 2017. It uses historical parking data to calculate parking difficulty scores as “Easy,” “Medium,” or “Limited.” Similar details like route efficiency and expected trip duration were present in Maps before, but you had to dig around the app or sometimes even Google a destination to find them.
By including these key points in both collapsed and extended route overviews, the app now provides more important and relevant information about your trip at a glance. The feature is available on both Android and iPhone, but not on Google Maps for the web.
When Will These Features Roll Out?
You hopefully won’t have to wait long for the update to hit. When looking up a destination, I can already see parking ease and availability. Estimated gas savings and arrival time are currently missing.
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The feature provides a look the routes and locations you’ve visited.
There’s no official word from Google on when the update will arrive. As with many Google Maps updates, you can expect it to roll out slowly across regions, with regions like the US, UK, and EU getting the update first. It’s also not easy to gauge the parking situation of millions of venues worldwide, so depending on your location, you may or may not see the feature anytime soon.
The search giant has been generous with rolling out features lately. You can now bettermatch your Google Maps icon to your real car, and the latest version of the Find Device app now makessharing your location with friends and family easier. The changes also align with Google’s wider push to unify navigation tools with vehicle infotainment systems.
Google is also working on integrating its Gemini AI in Maps, letting you ask questions about any destination opened within Maps. These new route overviews could also be bundled with the Gemini integration for one big update to be pushed in the future.
