Uber now lets you add your favorite places inside the app

[sincity]

Taxi-calling firm Uber is rolling out a welcome update to its mobile apps: the ability to add custom saved places to the map, so you can quickly get a cab to your grandmother's house or to your favorite pizza joint.

"Saved Places makes it easy to bookmark (and forget!) addresses so riders can get to the people and places they need to see faster," explains Uber in a blog post. You can even name addresses with emojis, if proper words are insufficient.

You'll be able to save a new place once you're en route to it in an Uber, and saved places are then accessible from the Where to? box that pops up whenever you're hailing a ride. You might even see a saved place as a suggestion if you go there often.

Uber, take me to the bar

"Riders repeatedly use Uber to get to just a handful of places - both for work and for fun," says Uber. "As you'd expect, in our early testing riders said that airports, hotels, and colleges are among the top use cases for this feature."

You can already save your home and work addresses inside the app but you'll soon have much more flexibility - add your best friend's house, the bar you frequent most regularly, your kid's school or anywhere else you like.

Uber says the feature is rolling out now on iOS and Android, but only in the US for the time being - the rest of us are going to have to wait until "later this year" to save places. Hopefully it shows up before the self-driving cars do.

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