Apple Quietly Gave an Important iPhone App Some Useful New Abilities

Since iOS 26 rolled out to the masses nearly a month ago, the next-gen operating system has brought a new Liquid Glass design and a ton of new features to both new and older iPhones.

While it hasn’t been as widely publicized, one of the main beneficiaries of iOS 26 has been Apple’s Maps app. It now sports a new look thanks to Liquid Glass, but, more importantly, it now has a couple of new features that you’ll actually use.

Apple Maps, upgraded

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

iOS 26 introduced a couple of helpful features to Apple’s default navigation app, but there are two standouts: Preferred Routes and Visited Places.

Preferred Routes is a feature that requires you to allow Maps to track your movements. This way, it learns your daily routines — whether commuting to work or dropping your kids off at school — and then, if there’s a delay, the Maps app will alert you ahead of time and suggest an alternative route to avoid it.

It promises to come especially in handy if you’re in a rush.

Apple

Visited Places is another significant upgrade. It works similarly in that it remembers where you go — and thus, requires giving Maps access to track your movements — and keeps track of the places you visit, like restaurants, shops, school or work.

Then, via accessing the new Visits Places tab, you can look back to see where you’ve gone.

Apple

Lastly, if you have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence — specifically, an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone Air, or any iPhone 16/17 model — there’s a superior search function for Maps.

As noted by 9to5Mac, for Maps on iPhones that support Apple Intelligence, the search function supports natural language.

So, instead of searching for a place by its exact name or something more general (like “Public golf courses near me”), you can ask more vague — Apple uses the example of “Find cafes with free Wi-Fi” — and it’s able to hone in on it.

If your iPhone is running iOS 26, you can try out all these new features now.

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