When it comes to driving and parking your car, there is nothing worse than forgetting where you parked. We were all there. Whether you’re in a big city or enjoying a sporting event or a Football game, you’re left with a sea of cars completely turned around with no clue where you parked. While there are many “Find My Car” type apps available in the Play Store, Google Assistant does this for you automatically on most newer Android phones.
The parking gods can only do so much for you when you find a good spot in front of you, a place where you can pull forward and easily exit. I love that this happens, but when you forget where you parked and accidentally lose your car, there’s nothing they can do. This is where Google Assistant comes in.
It’s a little frustrating to walk around apartments tapping the lock button on your keyless entry hoping to hear the chirping or flashing lights of your car options, so why not use Google’s built-in Find My Car feature. Here’s everything you need to know when it comes to locating your car with your Android smartphone and Google Now.
Google calls this feature Parking Location with Google Nowbut it’s essentially a nice way to know when you’re driving using sensors and GPS on your smartphone, automatically recognizing when you’ve stopped, and remembering where you might have parked.
Most of the available apps require you to open an app and make sure you hit the GPS button most of the time or actually enter your location. This is tiring, if you can’t remember where you parked, you probably won’t remember to launch that app every time. Matchday traffic and everything else gets stressful, but Google Assistant automatically records your car’s approximate location and presents it to you before you even ask.
Above is just one example of the card you’ll see in Google Assistant, and it’s just a swipe away. The Google Search app already installed on your phone is Google Assistant. You probably use it every day to get directions, ask a question, or make a general search. For the newbies, here’s how to make sure it will save your parking spot.
Instructions
On Nexus devices, swipe from right to left to go to Google Assistant, otherwise press and hold the home button on your Galaxy device, or on most LG, HTC and Moto devices, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and launch Google Assistant.
Once you’re in Google Assistant, you’ll want to follow these few steps to make sure it knows you’re traveling by car. Once you set this up, Google Assistant will automatically know when you are driving, exiting a vehicle, and will give you a location for where your car is.
In Google Assistant, scroll down and select the customize button. It looks like a wand, then go to everything else and select the “you usually commute” button, then the “drive” button and that’s it.
Google uses your device’s sensors to know when you’re inside and exit a moving vehicle; this means you can see the parking cards even if you haven’t parked your car. These cards can appear after you get off a bus or a friend’s car, no problem, swipe them up if you don’t really need the information at the moment.
Unfortunately, there’s no special tool to set this up to automatically remember where you parked every time or just when you need it. As a result sometimes I got the location reminder as I expected and other times it didn’t show up at all. Google has continued to update the Search & Now app as time goes on and this will definitely be a more useful tool in future updates.
If the service is not working as expected, make sure GPS is enabled on your device. Or if you want to disable parking reminders, tap the three dots on the location reminder card and select “No”, you don’t want to keep seeing these cards.
That’s all, you’re done. Enjoy!
