The Uber user interface is fantastic and the app works flawlessly. Lyft's seems to get in its own way.

Lyft

The Uber app just works better than the Lyft app. Plain and simple.

It's 2019. We have all been to a bad website before. You know what it's like: Things don't seem to flow, and menu options are in odd spots. Things aren't where you think they should be. The colors are slightly off. You click something and it's not working quite right. It freezes. It's glitchy. You get the impression that the website is clunky and unfinished.

This tacky website is a perfect description for the Lyft app, except I can't just go to a different website. This is the app that I am stuck with if I want to make money, and it is rarely updated for UI changes or performance upgrades. It's slow. It freezes. The default map is of the entire United States, instead of zoomed in on my location. Trying to zoom in sometimes doesn't work, and it regularly freezes mid-zoom. Getting to my profile requires a few taps in weird areas. The details of my recent rides aren't in an obvious spot.

The Lyft app gives you the impression that it was designed by a team that has never given an actual ride.

The Uber app, on the other hand, is a well-polished machine. It's clean looking. Everything you might need to access can be done within a tap or two in logical spots. It rarely freezes or glitches. Everything makes sense — the app just works.

Related: 11 of the best car apps you can download today

As drivers, we need the map to work, and we need for it to work well. It's how we get to the passenger. It's a tool, showing us streets, traffic patterns, and routes. Uber shows the fastest and shortest way to get to a passenger, and it is almost always spot on. Lyft sometimes takes me on the craziest routes in ways that make no sense. I once almost took a 1.4-mile detour because that is what the directions said to do, when all I actually had to do was to make a U-turn instead.

The most important time for the map to work is within the last hundred feet of when I am arriving to the passenger. Often times I will have to turn onto an unnamed side street sandwiched between giant hotels and restaurants, in a busy area full of other cars and pedestrians. Maybe I'm not 100% familiar with the area and I get pinged for a pickup on a busy street. I'm looking at the map, looking at the streets, looking at the map again. With Uber, I can tell exactly which street to turn on, and when I arrive the app automatically tells the passenger I have arrived, and then I simply wait. That's it.

With Lyft, as soon as I get close, right when I need the map the most, the app makes a loud sound, zooms all the way out to the United States, and says in big letters that take up the whole screen, YOU HAVE ARRIVED. You can't dismiss this message for five seconds. I don't know what's going on. I don't know where to turn.

The guy behind me is laying on his horn and is probably wishing ill things upon me and my stupid Prius. I'm now trying to turn onto what I hope is the right street, watching for jaywalking pedestrians, trying to click the "I have arrived" button on the app so the passenger with the SpongeBob profile picture knows I'm here, and now I'm slamming on my brakes to not hit the 38-year old man whizzing by me while he is having the time of his life on one of those new rentable electric scooters plaguing every major city. Somewhere, a baby is crying. And then, finally, the app is zooming back in only for me to see that I turned on a side street too early. Oh, and I think it just froze. Great.

I contacted Lyft about its horrible in-app navigation. Their response? "Use Waze."