Do taxis take toll roads or do you have to specifically request that ?

Took a taxi from IAH airport to my house north of the woodlands because we had lots of bags and Uber XL was really expensive. Was tired, had gotten off 20 hours of flying from Asia.

Gave driver the address; he put it in google maps, I didn’t direct him how to go. I’m so used to taking Ubers it didn’t cross my mind to tell him to take the shortest route, and I recently moved here from a city without toll roads.

Expected he would jump right on the hardy toll road and head north. He didn’t.

His app must have been set to avoid tolls because he drive south to 8 and then over to 45N and probably added like $15 to the fare to save me a $2 toll.

Is that normal or did he screw me, and in the future should I direct taxi drivers when I want them to take toll roads otherwise they drive a roundabout way that avoids tolls? They all have a way to automatically charge the toll to the fare, right?