Traffic jams sometimes happen when you least expect it. Fortunately, Google Maps has just revealed a new function that will delight motorists: display traffic jams directly on the home screen of the smartphone.

Traffic jams are really a nuisance and a waste of time. It’s always a nasty surprise when a driving assistance app takes you through a completely closed road. Fortunately, some apps are able to predict traffic. This is also the case in Google Maps, which is gaining new functionality. This is not new, Google Maps, as well as its counterpart Waze – which also belongs to Google – is able to predict traffic in real time. Only, the application must be open and a path programmed. However, traffic jams sometimes happen when you least expect them, even on roads you know by heart. To solve this problem, Google Maps has just revealed a new function: from now on, traffic forecasts will be displayed directly on the home screen of the smartphone.

Google Maps: Real-time traffic jam forecast

To take advantage of this option, it will be necessary to place the application on its home screen. It will take the form of a small square which will allow you to quickly know the condition of the roads around the current position. If the road is green, then everything is fine, but there are traffic jams if it turns red. “FifthYou will see this information about your current location right from your Android home screen. So if you’re about to leave home, work, school, or anywhere else, you’ll know at a glance what local traffic looks like. And since Android’s widgets are touchscreen, you can zoom in and out without opening the Maps app. ‘,” explains Luke Wroblewski, Product Manager at a Article from his blog.

This fee forecast is enabled by Google Maps users and their travel history. If the app finds that a number of people using the app are on the same street and static, it recognizes that it’s probably dead. On the other hand, this method does not allow to know how the traffic will develop in minutes, even in the coming hours.

At the moment, this functionality is only for Android smartphones and will arrive in the coming weeks, in addition to the emergence of tools that allow you to archive your emails with a simple touch or by a different view To-do lists.