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How to use or enable/disable Parked Car alerts from Maps on iOS 10 for iPhone

There’s a new feature in the iOS 10 update with Maps called Parked Car. It automatically tells your iPhone where you left your car and sends you a notification. This may or may not be useful depending on your needs. Luckily the Parked Car notifications are easy to disable or re-enable if you know where to look, and you can even disable the alerts without losing the feature.

The idea is that you can leave your car in a parking garage or giant parking lot somewhere and not have to remember that you parked in the orange zone on section B of level 8. You can even take notes and capture photos in the Maps app to add the extra specifics.

But if you don’t find yourself in situations where you need help remembering where you left your car, the Parked Car notifications can become annoying and spammy. It’s not useful to know that you parked in front of the restaurant or, you know, in the driveway at home.

Why iPhone sends Parked Car notifications

The new feature in iOS 10 works with both Apple CarPlay and standard car stereo Bluetooth. Maps marks your car’s current location automatically when your iPhone disconnects from CarPlay or Bluetooth.

iPhone sends you an alert to confirm your location has been saved. You can optionally tap the notification to launch Maps and snap a photo of your parking spot or nearby landmarks or jot down parking details.

If you like the Parked Car feature but not the alerts, you can disable Maps notifications without turning off the Parked Car feature. This will disable all alerts from Maps, however, so consider this before you proceed. This could potentially affect alerts when using Maps for turn-by-turn navigation, and at the very least you won’t see follow up alerts to Maps corrections that you submit.

Go to Settings → Notifications → Maps and toggle off Allow Notifications.

How to turn Parked Car notifications off (or back on) from iPhone

Go to Settings → Maps → YOUR CAR to toggle off Show Parked Location by tapping the white circle (it’s off if the green background goes away).

You can toggle this setting back on at any time in the future if you decide you do want to use the Parked Car notifications feature — like say on a trip into the city or when you leave your car at an airport — and have a specific location saved in Maps.

Parked Car can be helpful for automatically seeing how long you’ve been parked in a paid spot

Ideally, Maps could be smarter about when to notify you about Parked Car saving your location. For example, if you park at a frequently visited location that Maps already recognizes, maybe don’t send the alert. At the very least, if you park near your home address, just skip the alert but save the spot.

When you really do need help finding your parking spot, iOS 10’s Parked Car feature in Maps sure beats using the key fob to set off your car alarm and disturb the peace with obnoxious horn honking, but it’s definitely not necessary every single time you get out of the car.

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Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.

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