Hidden Features Every Waze User Should Know About

Some services become most people’s default simply by doing a lot of things right, and Google Maps is one of them. Its coverage in different countries and reliable navigation make it difficult to replace. Apple Maps has long recovered from its disastrous launch, but most people looking for an alternative will tend to turn to Waze, which Google has owned since 2013. The app is still very different from Google Maps, with a stronger focus on the real-time driving experience.

Since Waze is a crowdsourced navigation app, it relies on real road users to report things like accidents, potholes, traffic jams, and police activity when they encounter them. Beyond navigation, Waze offers a surprisingly useful set of features that many users may not be aware of because these options are often buried in the app’s menus. For starters, if you’re traveling to a friend’s house and have their address saved on your phone, Waze makes it easy to navigate without having to manually enter the address each time.

Open Waze, swipe up and scroll to the bottom where it says “Drive to friends and family. ” You will need to grant Waze access to your contacts for this feature to work. Once enabled, simply type the name of your friend or family member into the search box. As long as you have saved an address for that contact, Waze will allow you to begin browsing with just a tap.

It’s understandable if you’re not comfortable sharing your entire contact list with Waze. If you wish to revoke this permission, go to Settings > Apps > Waze > Contacts and press None on an iPhone. For Android, go to Settings > Apps > See all apps > Waze > Permissions > Contacts and tap “Don’t allow”.

Waze is already known for being more customizable than its competitors. For example, you can select a “Mood” by going to Settings > View Profile > Mood. This lets you choose how your avatar appears to other Waze users. So if you’re in a particularly bad mood, you can choose an avatar that matches your energy. You can also select a companion, who adds a bit of personality to the navigation experience by changing your vehicle icon, avatar, and even the voice that guides you along your route.

What’s even cooler is that Waze lets you record directions in your own voice. You can of course ask a friend or family member to do the vocal lines for you. A TikTok user shared how they used this Waze feature to capture their child’s adorable voice to make every ride a little more special. You can change voice packs on Waze by going to Settings > Voice & Sound > Current Voice. You can choose from a wide selection of presets or press “New voice” to save your own set of navigation prompts.

Waze lists a total of 39 (yes, I counted) different prompts to record, with a maximum recording duration of six seconds. There are voice lines for everything from basic turning instructions to warnings about hazards and speed cameras. If you don’t record a phrase in your own voice, Waze will play the default navigation voice for that instruction instead. However, if you don’t want to be caught off guard when a completely different voice suddenly sounds, it might be worth recording all 39 prompts.

Another useful feature of Waze that is often underused is the ability to plan your trips in advance. If you have a trip later today or an appointment you have scheduled for another date, Waze can recommend what time you should leave based on expected traffic along the route. There are two ways to plan trips using Waze. The easiest way is to search for your destination as usual and press the button “Leave later“button instead of”Go now.“

This will allow you to choose your arrival time in 15 minute increments. Waze also displays expected traffic levels next to the selected arrival time. You can change your departure location as well as the day of the week if you want to plan a trip further in advance. By pressing “To safeguard” will add the trip to your planned trips. You can view this list by tapping the hamburger menu and heading to “Plan a trip.“Here, Waze also lets you connect your calendar so that any upcoming events that have a location associated with them can automatically show up as planned trips.

If you want to dig even deeper into Waze, there’s another hidden trick worth exploring: secret codes that can be entered into the search bar. They allow you to access some of the application’s diagnostic tools and activate certain features. For example, by typing “##@morph“unlock a secret monster mood avatar for your profile and”##@cctts” clears the app’s text-to-speech cache, which may resolve some issues you’re having with voice navigation. There are other Waze search codes you can try, but it’s best not to mess with the ones intended for troubleshooting.