How to Get Your iPhone’s Calendar to Include Estimated Travel Time in Appointments
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Your iPhone can now make sure you leave in time for your next appointment.
In iOS 8, Apple’s latest software update, the Calendar app will schedule the amount of time it’ll take you to arrive at your meeting’s location. As a result, it can better estimate when you’ll need to be alerted to leave.
One caveat: This feature only works when you’re using an iCloud-hosted calendar. So that means if you’re trying set this up in Exchange, it won’t work.
Here’s how you do it:
Add something to your calendar the way you normally would — by touching the + sign in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Fill in the basic details, and make sure to add the location of your meeting. Apple uses its own map information to generate suggestions, which means they’re usually horrible if you’re just typing in the name of a store or a restaurant. Instead, you’ll need the exact address.
Then tap Travel Time.
Make sure it’s toggled on. From there, you’ll be asked to include your Starting Location (it’ll automatically fill it in with your current location, but you’re free to change it). Your travel time by foot or car will be calculated, and that amount of time will also be blocked out in your calendar. (Sorry, public transit riders. Maybe next iOS.)
When you go back to the event screen, you can use that info to decide when you want to receive a calendar alert.
It would be nice if those two were somehow connected. Perhaps that’s coming in the future. In the meantime, we hope this’ll prevent you from being so late all the time. Slacker.
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