It’s 2017 and you’re feeling like you’re off to a pretty good start. Go you!
To help out, I’ve decided to begin writing a weekly feature that highlights apps for iOS and Android that’ll make your life a tad better.
Here are the inaugural week’s apps:
Google Trips
I was always one of those people who would try to save all my emails for trips in an inbox folder — and then go digging through that folder in search of reservation codes, addresses and who knows what else. That’s just no way to travel.
Google created this (relatively new) app to make having a travel itinerary easy — the best part is, the app does everything for you. Trips will grab any travel information from your Google email account to create useful categories to help you find any information you need quickly. In the event Trips wasn’t able to grab a piece of information you want, the app also creates reference paths to easily get you back to the email that’ll have the info you want.
Instead of digging through emails, the fastest way to find a confirmation number is to open Google Trips, select a trip from the list and tap the Reservations box. In it are flight dates and departure times, addresses to hotels or Airbnbs, the confirmation number for the flights and more. Google trips will also let you download a particular trip to a device — no signal, no problem.
Google Trips is available for iOS and Android for free.
Waze
When you tell a maps app where you’re headed, sometimes it’ll give you traffic information to warn you of a slow down somewhere along your route. But that information doesn’t do you much good if the traffic jam is an hour away from your current location. That’s why Waze’s real-time information is far superior, especially if you’re on a long trip.
Waze was actually acquired by Google in 2013 — so if you trust Google’s maps, making the switch to Waze is easy. The app is constantly collecting data — a lot of it comes from drivers who are using the app. Thanks to this crowdsourced data, Waze is able to tell users about traffic jams, pulled over vehicles, speed traps and other potential roadblocks. The app also excels at pointing out alternate routes and shortcuts to help you avoid trouble ahead.
