Google Maps Will Now Automatically Save Your Parking Spot on Your IPhone.
Forgetting where you parked your car isn’t just a sitcom trope , though it’s a classic example . Even in the age of smartphones, it’s all too easy to walk away from your car and completely forget where you left it. As it turns out, Google Maps has a solution—provided you have an iPhone.
If you’re using the app on an Apple device, Google Maps will automatically remember your parking location and display it on the map. You don’t need to manually mark the location, tell the app to save your spot, or take photos of intersections if you forget: just glance at the screen to see the “You parked here” message.
The thing is, some people say this feature is relatively new to them, while others say it’s been around for quite some time. What’s the reason?
How Google Maps Automatically Saves Your Parking Location on iOS
This feature works if you connect your iPhone to your car , whether via Bluetooth, CarPlay, or a USB cable. When you disconnect your iPhone from the car, Google Maps will assume you’ve parked and automatically mark the spot on the map. The feature will also work if you grant Google Maps permission to access your driving and activity data, allowing the app to determine when you’ve started and stopped driving. (You can check this setting in the Google Maps app settings: go to “Navigation,” then under “Automatically save parking,” tap “Allow Maps to use your driving data to save parking .”)
You can also set Google Maps’ location permission to “Always,” which will grant the app constant access to your location data and allow it to detect when you’ve stopped your car. You can change this option on your iPhone by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Google Maps.
Is this feature really new?
This feature is truly remarkable, and I’m glad Google Maps supports it—even if Android users are inexplicably excluded from the list of supported services. But you might be wondering: Hasn’t this already been implemented? It doesn’t sound all that new. However, you’ve probably already seen numerous articles like this one today about this “new” parking feature in Google Maps.
As it turns out, the answer is a bit confusing. All the posts today are referring to this LinkedIn announcement from Ryo Akasaki, a senior product manager for Google Maps—except, according to LinkedIn, the post is already a month old. Some comments are more recent, but others seem to date back to the original publication.
The situation may be exacerbated by the fact that other navigation apps, such as Apple Maps,already support automatic parking location saving . While Google Maps also has a feature for saving your parking location, it previously didn’t work automatically . For the app to remember your parking location, you had to tap the blue dot on the map and select “Save Parking Location.” This still works on Android, as the automatic feature only works on iOS.
Looking through comments on articles on sites like The Verge or MacRumors , some users claim they’ve had this feature for years—long before LinkedIn’s announcement a month ago. One commenter says they’ve had it for years, while another claims they’ve had it “for ages.” So what’s the deal? Have at least some iPhone users actually had this feature for years? Perhaps Google was testing the feature on small groups of users and only recently rolled it out to the public, but whether that’s actually happened remains unclear.
I’ve reached out to Google for clarification on the timeline for this feature, and I’ll update this article if I hear back. Until then, I can only hope Google is actively working on bringing this feature to Android, as it would truly be something new.