Waze users are starting their Mondays with a sizable update. The company announced five new features for the app in a blog post this morning, with a heavy emphasis on AI enhancements and customizability. While the app has a reputation for finding you the fastest route humanly possible (with a heads up about police along the way), you might find the new update actually prioritizes your personal driving habits over the best ETA. Here’s what’s new:
Waze now features a motorcycle mode
If you ride a motorcycle and you don’t use Waze, you might want to give it a try. One of the app’s newest features is “motorcycle mode,” which uses AI to optimize directions for shortcuts and restrictions that might apply to motorcyclists. The new feature should also surface reports of driving conditions that are especially problematic for riders, like potholes, raised crosswalks, speed bumps, tight bridges, and shoulders that come to a quick close.
Waze says that its new feature runs on both traffic information pulled from drivers in real-time, as well as a team of motorcycle map editors. The initial rollout is quite limited, as the feature is only launching in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines. However, Waze says that more countries are on the way, so hopefully that will include the U.S.
New personalized navigation feature
Waze has another new feature designed to incentivize you to use the app more. As of today, Waze will suggest new routes based on your previous driving history—taking into account its own algorithmic recommendations, as well. If you tend to skip highways in favor of backroads, or vice versa, Waze will supposedly take that into consideration, and should start suggesting routes that align with your preferred driving style.
If you want the fastest route that Waze has to offer, regardless of your personal driving history, you should be able to choose that route, too. Waze says you can pick from alternate routes as well, or turn off this new personalized navigation feature entirely if you want.
How Waze’s “less chatty” mode works
“Less chatty” mode might not be the most eloquent name, but it’s certainly accurate. The new feature reduces the voice prompts that may interrupt your music or podcasts—and when they do interrupt, Waze tries to shorten them. The company says you’ll receive the usual “critical reminders” for things like hazards, turns, and lane changes, but only when necessary.
I’m all for more navigation apps (ahem, Apple Maps and Google Maps) taking inspiration from “less chatty” mode. Unless I’m in a totally new place, I tend to drive with alerts turned off entirely, so nothing interrupts my audio. While I’m sure I’d be annoyed by any of these prompts turning down or pausing my music, maybe I’d consider keeping this on if the interruptions really were infrequent (and quick).
What do you think so far?
Conversational Reporting supports casual map updates
Waze’s “Conversational Reporting” feature lets you report things like traffic slowdowns with your voice. The idea is to report these things hands-free, so you don’t have to worry about fiddling with the app to issue updates. That support is now going a bit further, as you can now send map updates with your voice.
For example, if you’re driving along your route, and you encounter a blocked road, you can say, “The road is closed here.” Waze says it will send your report to its editors, who will check out the claim, and update the map if they deem it valid.
Use Gemini to find your destination
Waze is a Google product, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the company builds in some Gemini integrations. Now, the company is testing Gemini integration in search: If you opt into testing, you can use Gemini to search for things like “find me a coffee shop that is currently open,” “find me parking close to this restaurant,” or “find the gas station with the lowest prices in my area.” As with all AI products, I’ll have to see how this one performs before I can say for sure how useful it is.
Again, this feature is in testing, which means you’ll need to enroll in the Waze beta on either iOS or Android to try it out. If you’re willing to become a beta tester, however, you’ll be able to trial it today.
