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How to Avoid Toll Roads When Navigating with Apple Maps
No joke: This may actually be my favorite feature of the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system. With Apple Maps in iOS 10, users can now specifically indicate that we’d like to avoid toll roads, and…well…I may need a moment to collect myself here, because this has been a long time coming. I’m not saying that I asked Siri to navigate me somewhere under iOS 9 only to have it take me right along a pretty expensive toll road, oh no. That never happened. And that certainly never happened twice. No sir. Um, anyway, here’s how to avoid toll roads when navigating with Apple Maps!
To manage how Maps deals with toll roads in iOS 10, head to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. From there, select Maps.
From the Maps Settings page, find and tap on Driving & Navigation.
At the top of this page, you’ll see two types of roads which Maps can be configured to “avoid” when calculating directions: Tolls and Highways. By default, both options will be disabled. To instruct the Maps app to avoid either one, in our case that’s Tolls, just tap the corresponding toggle switch to enable it.
With Maps configured to avoid Tolls, your future driving directions will be updated to do just that, keeping you away from toll roads at the expense of potentially longer routes. Just in case you forget about this option, each set of driving directions will have a small note, as shown in the screenshot below, if “Avoid Tolls” is enabled. This lets you decide on the fly if paying the toll is worth it for a quicker trip.
Finally, it’s important to note that when it comes to both tolls and highways, Maps will do its best to avoid these types of roads if possible. There may be some routes in which taking a toll road or highway is necessary, in which case the app will notify you when calculating the directions.
So with Maps in iOS 10, you now have a bit more flexibility to take the routes you prefer, and hopefully save some money, too. Drive safe out there!
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