How to find the Shortest Driving Route on Google Maps

What if you are travelling some where or say, within the city like Bangalore by car and you are not sure about the route. The first thing that you do is check with local people. But just to make sure, you also use Google Maps or Navigation on your Android device or iPhone or any device which has a built-in navigation system. When you use your navigation device you type in your destination place along with your source or current location, which will usually be picked up by the GPS. Your mobile device will now show the driving direction from source to destination in the map, but this route that is being displayed may not be the shortest driving route. There might be other short cuts to reach the same destination which might save few kilometers and also your time.

As an example consider the above map. I want to travel from point A (home) to B (office) and have used Google Map and navigation to get this route. By default, Google Map will show me the first map which is via well known highway - the outer ring road which has multiple signals. It's easy on your PC or Mac to find different routes as you can easily change the pointers, but that is not the case if you are using Google Now or your Google Maps app on Android device or Apple device. The easiest and simplest trick to find the shortest driving route from one place to another is change the mode of transport from your vehicle to 'walking'. This will change the route and as you can see in the second map above, the distance has come down by almost 7 kilometers. Note that this may not always work as you are selecting the mode as 'walking' and there may be no road at all. So, just give a try to find the shortest driving route and leave a comment if you have tried this or any other better way to do the same.