Creating Google Maps Navigation Shortcuts on BlackBerry Priv

The BlackBerry Priv comes equipped with a lot of widget shortcut options as you may have seen advertised by BlackBerry at launch or just discovered on your own.  There are widgets that come with applications you download as either popups you can embed in your desktop or swipe down on the icon, then there’s widget shortcuts which are available out of the box on the Priv.  In playing with some of these lately, I did discover one really useful widget shortcut for Google Maps navigation.  In my case, it is useful to just keep an icon set to my home address as it saves a lot of time over having to open the application, type home or the address.This pretty much allows you to create one click icons on your launcher for favorite destinations of your choosing.  It’s really simple to setup too.

1. Hold your finger down on your launcher background (home screen).
2. Once the menu comes up, click Widgets
3. Swipe right to the third tab which takes you to the BlackBerry Priv specific shortcuts.
4. Scroll down to Location and you’ll see the only option there called New Destination.
5. Hold down the New Destination icon and drag it anywhere on your launcher (a location you’d like it to be, can be changed anytime of course).
6. Immediately Google Maps launches, and you can enter in a destination of your choosing.
   1. First you can select which mode of transportation you want to use. – car, train, bike, walking.
   2. Next is a trigger to enable turn by turn navigation on launch (when you push the shortcut on your desktop).
   3. Input the destination and shortcut name – Choose what you want to call your shortcut on your desktop.
   4. Filters to avoid ferries, highways and tolls are available also to trigger at the end.  Once you hit Save, you’re good to go with your shortcut!