Google Maps just became an even better sat nav

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Google has given its Maps navigation app a little upgrade, with new heads-up notifications on what lane you need to get in to help ensure you don't miss that vital turn-off.

Google Maps is a pretty good freebie sat nav already, but Google product manager Darren Baker has just let us know about this new feature in the service.

Turn-by-turn navigation has been improved, with more sophisticated mapping data letting Maps tell you what lane you need to be in when turning off motorways and the like.

Smarter sat nav

This feature will be available in "Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK and Ireland," according to a post on the Google Europe blog.

You'll be directed into the right lane with both a little visual cue and voice commands. Because, as any driver knows, there are few things as frustrating as missing your turn-off on a motorway.

It seems likely this info may spread to some of Europe's smaller countries in time, but for now it's only for the real big hitters.

This marks one of the few neat little features we've seen added since Google altered the Maps interface to fit in with the Android 5.0 Lollipop Material UI back in November.

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