Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
Waze joined forces with YouTuber Dashie for a new update that provides users with special goodies, including a new navigation voice, a car icon, and a mood.
Dashie, who has 2.7 million subscribers on YouTube, joins Waze with a "Grumpy" mood that you can find in app settings. And if you're there, you can also enable the Dashie-Kart, a new vehicle icon that shows your location on the map as you drive to a destination. The Dashie-powered navigation voice includes custom directions with what Google describes as "hilarious mispronunciations and furious outbursts."
The new experience is available worldwide, but if you want to enable the new navigation voice, it'll only offer guidance in English and Spanish.
You'll see a banner when launching Waze that will let you activate the new experience.
Meanwhile, Waze is also working on new navigation features whose rollout has yet to start, despite the company originally promising to ship them by the end of April.
The Google-owned company is bringing warnings for speed bumps and sharp curves to users worldwide, giving them more time to slow down when approaching flagged locations. Waze will also mark the locations of toll booths.
The historic update also includes improved roundabout navigation, with Waze marking the lane you must use to enter and exit a roundabout more clearly.
Waze has become a must-have navigation solution thanks to its crowdsourcing engine. Compared to Google Maps, Waze relies on its users to generate traffic alerts, as anyone can send a report on a hazard they encounter on the road. Waze can report a wide range of hazards, starting with accidents and broken traffic lights and ending with floods, potholes, and roadkill. Using the information received from users, Waze can generate warnings that are submitted to other motorists.
Waze is also a fantastic app for finding a faster route to a destination. Compared to Google Maps, which typically sticks with main roads for simplified routes, Waze is always looking for faster alternatives, using any public road to get you there as quickly as possible. This means that Waze sometimes routes drivers on narrow residential roads and quiet communities, with authorities worldwide accusing the parent company of causing massive disruptions in these neighborhoods.
As I've recently explained, a combination of Google Maps and Waze offers a "more complete" navigation experience, with the latter in charge of showing reports, whereas the first suggests the route to the destination. Many believe such a duo highlights the need for a Google Maps – Waze merger, as the search giant could use the best of both apps for one all-in-one navigation product. My sources recently told me that a merge still isn't on the table, as Google wants to keep Google Maps and Waze separate products.
The new experience is available worldwide, but if you want to enable the new navigation voice, it'll only offer guidance in English and Spanish.
You'll see a banner when launching Waze that will let you activate the new experience.
Meanwhile, Waze is also working on new navigation features whose rollout has yet to start, despite the company originally promising to ship them by the end of April.
The Google-owned company is bringing warnings for speed bumps and sharp curves to users worldwide, giving them more time to slow down when approaching flagged locations. Waze will also mark the locations of toll booths.
The historic update also includes improved roundabout navigation, with Waze marking the lane you must use to enter and exit a roundabout more clearly.
Waze has become a must-have navigation solution thanks to its crowdsourcing engine. Compared to Google Maps, Waze relies on its users to generate traffic alerts, as anyone can send a report on a hazard they encounter on the road. Waze can report a wide range of hazards, starting with accidents and broken traffic lights and ending with floods, potholes, and roadkill. Using the information received from users, Waze can generate warnings that are submitted to other motorists.
Waze is also a fantastic app for finding a faster route to a destination. Compared to Google Maps, which typically sticks with main roads for simplified routes, Waze is always looking for faster alternatives, using any public road to get you there as quickly as possible. This means that Waze sometimes routes drivers on narrow residential roads and quiet communities, with authorities worldwide accusing the parent company of causing massive disruptions in these neighborhoods.
As I've recently explained, a combination of Google Maps and Waze offers a "more complete" navigation experience, with the latter in charge of showing reports, whereas the first suggests the route to the destination. Many believe such a duo highlights the need for a Google Maps – Waze merger, as the search giant could use the best of both apps for one all-in-one navigation product. My sources recently told me that a merge still isn't on the table, as Google wants to keep Google Maps and Waze separate products.
Google News