If you’re looking to avoid highways and toll roads when using Apple Maps, there are a few things you can do. First, make sure your device is up-to-date. Apple releases new versions of the app regularly with bug fixes and improvements, so it’s always worth checking for updates. If your device is up-to-date, another way to avoid highways and toll roads is to use the “Flyover” feature. Flyovers show you a 3D view of the area below, so you can see where the road goes before deciding to take it. Finally, if all else fails and you find yourself on a highway or toll road anyway, be prepared for the cost. Many highways and toll roads have variable rates that change depending on time of day or traffic conditions. Make sure to check ahead before getting on the road! ..
If Apple Maps is your navigation tool of choice and you prefer avoiding toll roads, staying off the highways, or both, it’s easy to tweak Apple Maps to meet your needs.
Whatever your motivation—be it avoiding tolls, highway traffic jams, or just ensuring you drive past the world’s biggest ball of yarn and other curiosities—you just need to jump into the general Settings app on your iPhone to make it happen. Scroll down until you find the entry for “Maps” and select it.
Scroll down and select “Driving & Navigation”.
Toggle “Tolls” and “Highways” on to match your preference. (And as a bonus, if you’d like to see an on-screen compass, you can toggle that too—you can read more about the compass function in Maps here.)
Don’t worry about the hassle of turning these toggles off if you actually do want to use a toll road or a highway. By enabling this function, the navigation instructions will default to the non-toll/non-highway routes, but you’ll still see them as available options when you search for directions.
In the screenshot below you can see how Apple Maps gave us a non-toll route to Chicago but the on-screen warning notes that there is are faster routes that use toll roads and/or highways. If you look at the suggested routes you can see these alternative routes (the toll route is flagged with a $ symbol).
As such, it’s trivially easy to decide that a toll road is a better option if your time constraints or desire to get off the road sooner call for it.
