When you're getting ready to leave for work/school in the morning or drive back home in the afternoon, Google Maps can be quite helpful. It usually pops up, telling you how long it'll take to get to your destination, letting you prepare for a peaceful drive or a long one with lots of traffic. Maps has recently begun improving that notification with an overview of your drive.

If you expand the notification, you'll see a square preview of your commute. The drawn directions follow the same traffic color code as Maps, so any section with slow-downs or jams will be clear at a glance in orange, red, or burgundy. That should let you know where exactly to expect traffic, and possibly plan ahead by taking an alternate route or just grabbing a coffee or good podcast beforehand to better handle the delay.

A few tipsters have told us about this new notification preview, but we couldn't replicate it. Some of us here at AP live and work at home, while others like me keep dismissing the notification by sheer muscle memory, forgetting to expand it and see what it hides.

Google Maps Developer: Google LLC
Price: Free
4.1
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Thanks: Ramit Suri, Moshe