Google has now quietly rolled out a brand new feature to their Google Maps app, which should be very useful for people living in urban areas. The feature in itself is quite similar to the parking location feature that Apple has had on their Apple Maps app since the launch of iOS 10. However, Google's implementation is a bit different and offers a bit more functionality.

According to Tech Crunch, Google actually introduced a similar proactive parking saver function via Google Now. The biggest difference, however, is that Google Now required users to manually turn on their phone's sensors to log that they had already parked at the given location.

Apple's Apple Maps on the other hand automatically marks the location of the car when the device is disconnected from the vehicle's Bluetooth or CarPlay. Users can then edit the location of the vehicle and add relevant data such as a photo or an additional note. Google's new parking feature will still require a manual input to start the feature, but this does have a few advantages.

Apple's system does sometimes log a parking, even when the user doesn't really want it to. This happens mostly when a user gets off a taxi, or perhaps is dropped off by a vehicle that is not their own. Google's new Google Maps parking feature also allows users to enter in more information about their parking spot, including multiple photos of where they had parked.

Photos are of course a common way for people to identify where they had parked their vehicles as they will be able to take a shot of the parking space number, the garage number, row color code, and other information about the location. The biggest feature, however, is Google's built-in timer, which will let users set the time they have left on any particular spot. This is useful for limited-time paid parking areas or metered spaces, where forgetting could result in hefty fines or a towed vehicle.

The feature is currently available for the Android version of Google Maps v 9.49. Google has yet to announce when it will be rolling out the parking feature for the iOS version of Google Maps.