Google Maps offers a great way to plan your travel. You can set departure and arrival times, as well as other important information, like hotels and restaurants. You can also find information about transportation options.
Unless you work from home, Google Maps is fantastic at knowing where you need to be, and how long to get there. But you did the math on when to leave. Thankfully Google can tell you that now too.
Google Maps is excellent for finding directions to the places you need to go, even if that means making multiple stops. And Google is always improving the service, whether that’s adding commute features or helping you find Electric Vehicle Charging Stations.
The one downside has always been that unless you use the website, you have to figure when to leave on your own. In the Android app, Google historically provided an estimate of the travel time, but you did the math on what that meant for departure and arrival time. Now in its latest update, you can set either a depart time or an arrival time, and it will provide an estimate of the other end for you. That is, if you set a depart time it will give you an estimate of when you should arrive. And if you set an arrival time, you will receive an estimate on when you should leave.
Obviously, like most mapping features, this won’t be perfect. If you set a departure time for tomorrow, it can’t know about a wreck that may happen during the drive when it provides an estimated arrival time.
How to Set Departure and Arrival Times
First, enter start and end destinations as you usually would. Then tap on the overflow menu.
From there, tap on the “Set depart & arrival time” choice.
You should start on the “depart at” tab. If you want to set an “arrive by” time, tap on that. Then set the time and day you want to leave or arrive.
At that point, you should now see the estimated time based on what you provided. If you need to make a change, just tap on the down arrow next to that time.
As always with any mapping software, use this as a guide and not a hard promise, especially for long driving trips. Driving conditions change rapidly, so it never hurts to prepare for trips to take longer than they should.
