Waze Apple CarPlay App Now Available For All – Here is our Walkthrough

Close off the heals of Google Maps appearing on CarPlay, today marks Waze and their latest Apple CarPlay compatible app update to the general public.

Version 4.43.4 will require iOS 12 to be installed to work with CarPlay, which was released on Monday 17 September 2018.

App Icon

Once installed, or updated, you’ll see the Waze icon sitting on your CarPlay home screen. Now you have at least three navigation apps to choose from!


Main Overview

Launching for the first time you’ll be taken to the main overview screen, showing your position on the all familiar Waze map tiles, with its recognisable blue arrow (or car if you have changed it in the settings menu on the iPhone. Tapping the screen allows you to invoke the Apple UI drop bar at the top, which displays options to search for a destination, view favourite destinations as a list or speak your destination. To the lower corner, you can pan the map around using directional arrow controls, zoom in and out, and there is also the Waze report button to set a report in your current location on the map.

Search For Destination & Favourites

Selecting the Search or Favourite (Star) icon will take you to a list of previously searched for destinations as well as Home and Work entries. At the top you have the option to use a keyboard to enter your destination or alternatively you can press the microphone button to speak your destination.


Search Keyboard

Selecting the keyboard will display a onscreen keyboard, which allows you to enter your destination address, post code or place name – something Apple Maps should take note of.

Route Options

Once your destination is set, you’ll see the common overview map, displaying the various routes to your destination. Selecting Go commences navigation, whilst More Routes will display options in a list format along with their distances.

Guidance

During guidance mode, you can toggle sound options. The routes option is also displayed to allow you to dip back into selecting an alternative route. The Search icon takes you back to searching for a new destination or adding an additional stop on the existing route. Pressing Stop will simply cancel your navigation and remove any navigation. To the lower right there is an option to pan using screen arrow (although you can panel with touch by swiping anywhere on the map), doing so during guidance will bring up a recenter button. At the very button is the same Report button, to take you straight to the reporting menu of options. Unlike Google Maps, the guidance panel is more similar to Apple Maps, in black.

Adding A Stop

Selecting the Search icon whilst being guided takes you back to searching for a new destination or you can add the chosen destination as an additional stop on the existing route you’re on.

Sound Options

Selecting the speaker option during navigation displays the three sound options. You can have alerts only, sound all off or all sounds and alerts on.

Speak Your Destination

Here is the screen when you speak your destination. Whilst this is visible the microphone is open to speech dictation of your destination. This is alternative to using the previous locations or the onscreen keyboard.

Reporting

One of the most helpful features of Waze is its community reporting tools. Here is where members can place alerts along their journey for situations such as Police, Accidents, Traffic and Hazards. The four main options are listed. Police and Accident drop a report pin immediately, whilst Traffic drills down to one menu and the Hazard displays one additional menu before displaying you options in each.

Wrap Up

Just like Google Maps, Waze has been long overdue its appearance on CarPlay. Many beta testers are experiencing a few bugs with this update, however I am sure the Waze team will now be proactive in fixing these issues. With Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps now on your CarPlay screen, it can be tricky to decided which one to use and which will guide you the best.

For existing Waze users, or Wazers, you can jump right on in, knowing all your favourites and settings are reflected on the CarPlay display and receive very helpful alerts, such as Police and speed camera locations through to avoiding the many hazards that get reported on the road. In this release I didn’t see speed of roads, like in Apple Maps, and I couldn’t get the speaking destination to work on my Android dongle test tablet. However I’ll jump onto my Alpine X902-D to test Waze out on the route fully tomorrow.

As the months pass, all navigation apps will get fine-tuned and hopefully compete with one another with new features and performance improvements as they each jostle for being THE primary navigation app on your CarPlay Home Screen.

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