What you need to know
- App hacker Jane Manchun Wong has discovered a slew of new features Lyft is working on for its app.
- Some highlights include background location sharing, Auto-arrive, a dark mode, and a price watching tool.
- None of the features are currently live in the app, and Lyft has given no official announcement or timeline on when we can expect to see them.
Recently, notable app hacker, Jane Manchun Wong, used her skills to dig into the Lyft app and discovered several new upcoming features. On February 6, 2020, she released her findings in a series of tweets on her personal Twitter account, including screenshots.
Now, it's important to note that none of these features are currently live, but we're at least getting a peek at what Lyft is working on behind the scenes, and what to expect in the future.
One of the highlights from the feature reveal was background location sharing. When accessing this setting, Lyft will allow passengers to share their location during your ride to ensure you stay on track. This is an important safety feature that should help ease concerns for riders in the future. There is also an option to share your location until pickup that will help your driver find you more quickly.
Along the same lines of background location sharing, Lyft is also working on an "Auto-arrive" feature for drivers. Located under the navigation settings, Auto-arrive will automatically notify your passenger when you arrive near the destination.
Next up are some quality-of-life improvements for riders such as the ability to enter your destination by voice and a price watching tool called "Commute alert." As seen in the screenshot below, once the voice search is available, it will show up as a microphone within the search box. While Commute alert will allow you to get price and traffic information for a route after you enter in all the pertinent details.
Wong also uncovered a dark mode in the Android Lyft Driver app that will make the entire app darker, including the map. Hopefully, this makes its way to the regular Lyft app as well, because we can all use more dark mode in our lives.
Some more features Lyft is working on specifically for drivers includes, in-app vehicle service appointment scheduling, a price level indicator, driver referral mileage bonuses, notification preferences, a new profile page, and biometric lock for the app.
That was the end of Wong's tweetstorm and summed up everything she found while rifling through Lyft's code. However, Lyft has not officially confirmed any of these features, and we have no timeline for when they might arrive.
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