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Waze is a free navigation app for your GPS equipped smartphone. It has the following features:

• Spoken turn-by-turn directions
• Spoken street names (Text-to-Speech) ^[a]
• Real time traffic reports
• Real time Gas Prices ^[b]
• Toll road avoidance ^[b]
• Free regular updates to the map that you can help make are installed automatically
• Search for destinations how you like: entire address at once, category, place name, landmark or use the addresses from your contacts
• Integrated destination search: Google, Foursquare, Bing
• Support for apps to insert destinations into Waze, such as Localscope
• Support for multiple languages
• Gaming elements for fun and integrated social networking

^a BETA: in selected countries
^b Toll Roads and Gas Prices dependent on user contribution

Read more about the amazing way Waze gets better when you just drive around with Waze turned on

You can use your language skills to help make Waze better

• Read the User Manual
• Get the free Waze app for your supported smartphone
• Get help when you have Waze running but the map shows few or no roads, or streets with no names, or you travel to an unmapped area
• Understand the timing of updates, including when you can edit roads you have driven on
• Edit
  • Please do not edit the map until you have read the Waze Map Editor manual and reviewed the best map editing practices
  • Please do not turn on recording a new road unless you are about to drive on to a road that is not already on the map
• Use the My Dashboard section on the Waze website
• Read the answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and the glossary of terms
• Participate in the announcements and discussion forums

If you have problems, try and find your own solution or ask the community for help:

• Use the Wiki - there is a search box just to the left
• Use the Discussion Forums

If all else fails, you can email Waze with your problem

You can make Waze better for yourself and everyone else

• Just drive around with Waze turned on. The easiest way you can improve Waze. Read how this amazing process works
• Encourage others to use Waze
• Make suggestions to improve Waze
• Improve and edit the maps
• Use your language skills
• Help others and support the Waze community
• Update this Wiki
• Update the Waze client app
• What is MapRaid, what is it good for and how to start one in your community.

Waze is a fun and sophisticated navigation app. In most developed countries Waze provides superior navigation information over commercial GPS applications. Like any developing application, there are issues and complications that are being worked to resolve. Many of them are cosmetic and do not prevent a fully gratifying experience when using Waze.

Temporary issues are tracked in the official Waze server status and issues page.

Note that Waze Bugzilla, a tool previously used for bug reporting, is no longer in use. The Waze community used to report and tracks bugs and problems in the Bugzilla application. At the time, it was the best place to identify any currently known issues. There is no official replacement for Bugzilla.

Some of the more common issues include:

• Routing distance is limited to about 1,000 miles (1600 km) distance. To route to longer distances, select a point between your origin and destination less than this limit.

• When you request a route the client device app assumes you are continuing in the same direction you last traveled. This is often desirable, but can lead to unnecessarily longer routes when you have a choice of direction from your starting position. If you start driving the other direction, it will recalculate the route.

• Issues and limitations on your supported model smartphone

• Odd routing: Waze has been known to make short detours. In these situation, Waze instructs the driver to turn off a road, only to have the driver immediately return to it. Ostensibly, this shortens the route, but it produces routes that many drivers consider unreasonable, and the time savings are often dubious. Editors can often work around this using the Detour prevention mechanisms.

Waze is growing fast in features and popularity. This is not a complete list of development areas, but should reassure you that Waze is aware of your concerns and is working to make things better.

Current development focus includes:

• Upgrading the worldwide infrastructure to allow Waze to support the growing number of users while making the service more reliable
• Bug fixing
• Integrating features to generate revenue for Waze
• Releasing feature equal clients for Android and iOS
• Adding the ability to search for location by UK postcodes
• Supporting correct routing of authorized veichles on Carpool, HOV, Transit lanes
• Implementing a web interface to allow editors to immediately close streets for a specified period.

Recently completed:

• Upgrading the World servers, which has increased the reliability and speed of editing maps
• Improved the routing in areas of Private Roads and Parking Lot roads
• ASR (Automated Speech recognition)
• TTS (Text to Speech voice guided turn-by-turn instructions that announce the street names for upcoming turns) in multiple languages
• Gas price integration
• POI category search
• Toll Road avoidance
• Time of day turn restrictions
• Time of day road directionality changes
• Implementing road blocks and road closures

• Waze routing servers
  • Routing penalties
• How Waze determines turn / keep / exit maneuvers
  • Interactive junction instruction algorithm
• Serving North America and the Rest Of The World
• How to send log files
• Source code
• Change logs for your client app
• Wiki maintenance tasks
• Waze in the news and other media
• Waze permissions on Android and their purpose
• Detour Prevention Mechanisms