Look, we’ve all been there. You’re on a road trip and you pull off the highway for some food or fuel. And then Google Maps starts (rudely) yelling at you to get back on the road. The company has all the money and AI chips in the world and yet the app can’t just chill when you need to make a pit stop.
So when Google announced Wednesday that it’s adding two new features to Maps, a tiny part of my brain held out hope that this would be the day it would resolve this conflict.
Alas, neither of the features Google announced is the ability to pause navigation mid-trip. The company is making it easier to report things like construction, lane closures and police presence. It’s also going to more obviously highlight the destination and even the building entrance and nearby parking lots, which should help with unfamiliar places. Great!
Of course, in a situation like the one I described above, one could exit the navigation and start it back up after acquiring said food or fuel. In fact, this the exact solution I got from Google’s own “AI Overview” as I was searching for examples of other people begging the company to add a pause function to the Maps app. One could also add the pit stop as a “waypoint” to the trip to stop the app from insistently re-routing — as is suggested in the top result from Google’s own support community. But that adds even more work and mental load for a person who’s already driving a car.
Google, when asked by TechCrunch, pointed out that navigation will automatically pause if you have already added the stop as a “waypoint” to the trip. But if you make a stop on a whim, the company similarly suggests ending the trip and resuming it once you’re done with the detour.
I know I’m not alone here, as people have spent years asking Google for this feature. And to be fair, Apple Maps does not have this feature either. Neither does the other top option, Waze, which Google also owns.
This is Silicon Valley, the land of incinerating money in service of eliminating friction. The tech industry has helped convenience seep into every other facet of modern life, so why is this particular example of its absence allowed to persist?
Updated with information from Google on other ways to handle mid-trip stops.
