Waze - GPS Navigation, Maps & Social Traffic
By Waze Inc.
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Description
Waze is the world's largest community-based traffic and navigation app. Join drivers in your area who share real-time traffic & road info to save time, gas money, and improve daily commuting for all.
Just by driving with Waze open, you're already contributing tons of real-time traffic information to your local community. You can also actively report accidents, police traps and other hazards you see on the road. Get road alerts along your route and find the cheapest gas prices around you shared by the community. Plus, you can add friends, send locations or keep others posted on your arrival time.
- Live routing based on community driven, real-time traffic & road info
- Community reported alerts including accidents, hazards, police traps, road closures, and more
- Turn-by-turn voice guided navigation
- Live maps, consistently edited and updated by Waze community map editors
- Automatic rerouting as conditions change on the road
- Send your ETA & real-time drive to update those you’re meeting
- Learns your frequent destinations, commuting hours, and preferred routes
- Find the cheapest gas station on your route
- Add information on local places and businesses
- Add Facebook friends and sync Contacts
- See friends’ ETA when driving to the same destination
- One tap navigation to Facebook & Calendar events
- Earn points as you contribute road info and climb the ranks in your community
Waze is all about contributing to and benefiting from the common good, so hop on board and get involved!
Note: Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life. Waze will automatically shut down if you run it in the background and haven't driven for a while.
Learn more about the Waze privacy policy, including what information is accessed and how it is used. With Waze, you have full control over your privacy settings. http://www.waze.com/legal/privacy/
What's New in Version iOS 4.13.0
* Bugs and stability fixes
Customer Reviews
Overview map is too difficult to access
Waze does a really great job if you are willing to turn over every aspect of navigation to it and don't like to think about where you are going beforehand. The app doesn't show you an overview of your entire route on its basic page, which is a pretty essential part of navigation for me - I like to see what the digital brain has come up with and compare it to what my organic brain, with its real-time, on-the-ground knowledge and ability to make judgement calls, has come up with, and I especially like to make sure that my destination is correct in the app.
It is possible to get a map overview that compares routes, but unlike google maps and apple maps, you have to drill down a few steps to get to it.
After a few bad experiences I no longer trust waze to get me to a destination that isn't on a city grid or uses a major highway. Since I just today figured out how to go through the steps to get the overview (it's a very commonly searched google topic, btw, which is a big hint for the developers) I guess I can use it the same way I use other navigation apps now, but I don't understand why the developers have made this step so inconvenient. It seems to be encouraging the user to not think, to blindly trust the app, and to unlearn navigational decision making. But: all of these apps make mistakes because they are NOT PEOPLE. Everyone should check their route before they go, and waze makes it unnecessarily difficult to do that.
Nothing better for beating traffic
Waze isn't perfect but for getting the best routes to avoid traffic in real time there is NOTHING else that comes close. It's traffic data, collected from millions of drivers in real time, is very accurate and the app generally does an excellent job automatically changing your route on the fly while you drive.
As others have said, it's tough to get an "overview" of your drive to see what route it's taking...the best way to find this is tap on "Routes" after setting your destination, then tapping "Map" and you'll see the route you have set plus two alternates it suggests. Doesn't show you a turn by turn but it can give you the general idea. Also, sometimes the end game is a little funny, you'll likely take your own better routes the last few blocks before home or familiar places...not really a big deal if your just trying to get somewhere you're unfamiliar with. This app works best when you set it and just trust it - do what it tells you. If that's not enough info to make you comfortable, you might prefer a more comprehensive maps program to plan a route.
Searching for destinations by name is excellent, recent destinations and sharing your drive are quick and painless. Road alerts are generally helpful. I have Waze running almost every time I drive, I suggest it to everyone.
Best for what's out there...
I love waze, I do. But I also can't stand some things about it. No option for satellite or hybrid maps. The route preview is tricky to find and is limited in zooming abilities. In order to view the step-by-step directions for each route option, you have to jump through hoops & ideally annoying. And most of all, I CONSTANTLY click the "Routes" button at the bottom of the screen throughout my entire drive to my destination. Why? Bc, especially in traffic, the fastest route is CONSTANTLY changing. It's unsafe to be doing this while driving (so I should stop, I know), but why don't alternate/faster routes pop up on the screen throughout the drive?? Like Google... Doesn't Google own waze?
Lastly, the voice command thingy should allow you to ask to navigate to ANY/ALL destinations (not just work & home). Duh. Maybe even allow us to "seek alternate routes" through voice too.
But, as initially stated, it's the best of what's out there. I use it over Google maps bc of the variety of routes & police trap warnings. But Google maps solves about 90% of the issues I noted above with their gps, so I go back and forth between the apps.
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- Free
- Category: Navigation
- Updated: Oct 05, 2016
- Version: iOS 4.13.0
- Size: 77.4 MB
- Languages: English, Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish
- Seller: waze
- © Waze Inc.
Compatibility: Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.