What the Tech: Traveling tech tips

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - An estimated 1.2 million Michiganders will be traveling over Memorial Day Weekend. That means crowded highways, traffic jams and high gas prices.

Related: Red flags to look for when booking your vacation rental

If you’re not using Waze as a GPS for the car, you’re traveling wrong.

Sure Apple Maps is convenient for iPhone users and has improved, but Waze is used by far more people who constantly update traffic information, hazards, and police presence.

It isn’t totally hands-free and you can’t make it the default GPS app on the iPhone. If you ask Siri to give directions, it’ll open Apple Maps and if you’ve deleted it, you’ll be prompted to install it.

If you ask Siri to launch Waze and get directions, it will open Waze and give you directions and travel information.

To find the best price while you’re tooling down the highway, the app GasBuddy is the most dependable way to find gas prices. It’s widely used by other travelers and prices are generally updated daily, if not hourly.

If your internet connection gets super slow on the highway, here’s a trick: turn on airplane mode for 3 seconds, then turn it off again. This forces the phone to search for the nearest cell tower.

Ever wonder why your phone doesn’t charge very fast in the car, if at all? The USB ports in most cars are made for listening to music or connecting CarPlay. Pick up a charger that plugs into a cigarette lighter and it will charge your phone 10 times faster than a USB port.

More: What the Tech

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