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About Waze
Waze is a free navigation app for your GPS equipped smartphone and provides the following features:
- Spoken turn-by-turn directions
- Spoken street names (Text-to-Speech)
- Real-time traffic reports
- Real-time Gas Prices [a]
- Toll road avoidance [a]
- Free regular updates to the map that you can help make are installed automatically
- Search for destinations how you like: entire address at once, category, place name, landmark or use the addresses from your contacts
- Integrated destination search with a massive country-wide database and Google
- Support for apps to insert destinations into Waze, such as Localscope
- Support for multiple languages
- Gaming elements for fun and integrated social networking
^a Accuracy dependent on user contributions
Read more about the amazing way Waze gets better when you just drive around with Waze turned on
Getting started
- Read the topics on Waze Help Center
- Get help when you have Waze running but the map shows few or no roads, or streets with no names, or you travel to an unmapped area
- Understand the timing of updates, including when you can edit roads you have driven on
- Edit
- Please do not edit the map until you have read the Waze Map Editor manual and reviewed the best map editing practices
- Use the My Dashboard section on the Waze website
- Read the answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and the glossary of terms
- Participate in the announcements and discussion forums
If you have problems, try and find your own solution or ask the community for help:
- Use the Wiki - there is a search box just to the left
- Use the Discussion Forums
If all else fails, you can email Waze with your problem
You can make Waze even better
You can make Waze better for yourself and everyone else
- Just drive around with Waze turned on. The easiest way you can improve Waze. Read how this amazing process works.
- Encourage others to use Waze
- Make suggestions to improve Waze
- Improve and edit the maps
- Use your language skills
- Update this Wiki
- Join a MapRaid. Then consider starting one in your community.
Problems, bugs and limitations
Waze is a fun and sophisticated navigation app. In most developed countries Waze provides superior navigation information over commercial GPS applications. Like any developing application, there are issues and complications that are being worked to resolve. Many of them are cosmetic and do not prevent a fully gratifying experience when using Waze.
Temporary issues are tracked in the official Waze server status and issues page.
Note that Waze Bugzilla, a tool previously used for bug reporting, is no longer in use. The Waze community used to report and tracks bugs and problems in the Bugzilla application. At the time, it was the best place to identify any currently known issues. There is no official replacement for Bugzilla.
Some of the more common issues include:
- Routing distance is limited to about 1,000 miles (1600 km) distance. To route to longer distances, select a point between your origin and destination less than this limit.
- When you request a route, the client device app assumes you are continuing in the same direction you last traveled. This is often desirable, but can lead to unnecessarily longer routes when you have a choice of direction from your starting position. If you start driving the other direction, it will recalculate the route.
- Issues and limitations on your supported model smartphone
- Odd routing: Waze has been known to make short detours. In these situations, Waze instructs the driver to turn off a road, only to have the driver immediately return to it. Ostensibly, this shortens the route, but it produces routes that many drivers consider unreasonable, and the time savings are often dubious. Editors can often work around this using the Detour Prevention Mechanisms.
Development plans and priorities
Waze is growing fast in features and popularity. This is not a complete list of development areas, but should reassure you that Waze is aware of your concerns and is working to make things better.
Current development focus includes:
- Upgrading the worldwide infrastructure, allowing Waze to support the growing number of users while making the service more reliable
- Bug fixing
- Integrating features to generate revenue for Waze
- Releasing the same features for Android and iOS
- Supporting correct routing of authorized vehicles on Carpool, HOV, Transit lanes. Waze currently supports taxis, and private vehicles.
Recently completed:
- Upgrading the World servers, which has increased the reliability and speed of editing maps
- Improved the routing in areas of Private Roads and Parking Lot Roads
- ASR (Automated Speech recognition)
- TTS (Text to Speech voice guided: turn-by-turn instructions that announce the street names for upcoming turns) in multiple languages
- Gas price integration
- POI category search
- Toll Road avoidance
- Time of day turn restrictions
- Time of day road directional changes
- Implementing road blocks and road closures
Have fun going your own Waze.