Google Maps v9.49 beta Finally Remembers your ‘Avoid Tolls’ Preference and Saves your Parking Location

Google apps get minor point updates on a nearly daily basis, so most of the time when a new update is released on our devices we don’t bat an eyelid. Hence, normally we generally don’t what changes with minor updates to Google apps, because they happen so often that usually there’s nothing really interesting to talk about.

But this time is different. After years of railing on Google Maps for not allowing us to save our parking location or our route preference (despite the fact that the iOS version has had the latter feature for a long time), the latest beta update to Maps finally adds both features.

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Remembering Route Preference

If you live in a large city with tons of highways like I do, then you’ll likely find yourself having to plan your routes to avoid toll roads. Google Maps has an “avoid tolls” feature built in, but for the longest time the feature required manually enabling it every single time you wanted to go somewhere.

We came up with a Tasker solution to automatically avoid toll roads when starting navigation, and later Google added a feature to change your route preference while in the middle of navigation by speaking an “OK Google” command. Now, however, Google Maps will simply remember what route preference you set from a previous trip and use that for your subsequent trip. Try it out!

Parking Location

Credits: +MatthewBohr

Saving your current parking spot is an oft-requested feature, one that we also cooked up a Tasker script to solve. Google Maps v9.49 beta finally allows you to save your parking location, albeit you have to do so manually. Simply tap on your current location in Maps (indicated by the blue dot) and you will see a dialog with a new option to save your parking.

To be honest, it’s not all that different than saving this location manually and labeling it “parking” but it’s nice in that it skips a step and labels it your parking spot for you. Hopefully the feature becomes more intelligent in the future, so Google Maps can automatically detect when we’ve parked.

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Download Google Maps v9.49 beta over on APKMirror.