Google Maps makes it easier to find parking with your phone

It's hard enough getting where you want to go, but parking, once you get there, can be a trial in and of itself.

Public parking near most destinations in big cities isn't exactly easy to find, and chances are unless you put the parking as your destination, you're probably not lined up properly to get into it once Google Maps cheerfully states You Have Arrived. Google Maps knows that's a big frustration and it's starting to show parking around your destination. If you're navigating in one of select major cities, that is.

Google is debuting the ability to find parking around your destination when you're starting your drive, so you're navigating to where you park rather than where you're trying to visit. This is available for destinations in 25 cities within the U.S., including New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

Twenty-five cities outside the U.S. will see Parking Difficulty icons when they're setting a destination to drive to, from limited to medium to easy, but won't have the parking locations listed to specifically navigate to. The parking difficulty is gauged by machine learning, so it might not be correct every time, but at least having a ballpark is a step in the right direction.

Google Maps: Everything you need to know