If you use Waze and occasionally need to take your eyes off the road to control your music with your maps, a new update is coming out that will allow you to spend more time driving and less time with that touchscreen. Macroemers Reports that Waze has started to roll Apple CarPlay dashboard support, which allows you to view directions with CarPlay’s home screen, media controls, calendar events, and more. When I heard about it, I ran towards my car, enough, Waze’s directions were shown on the home screen.
The company began beta testing the feature Late last month, But since the introduction of iOS 13 the Carplay Dashboard has been available to Apple Map users (although it is only open to third-party developers from iOS 13.4). Integration is a success for driver safety because the golden rule for car UI is to “touch the screen as much as you can.”
Before this update, if you want to change the song you are playing, you need to go to the Music app, press the Next button, and then go to Waze. It can be anywhere from 3 to 6 trays on the screen, depending on whether Waze was in the app launcher on the side. That’s a lot, especially if you go 70 miles an hour. Now, you can have both Waze, the next time you have to pick up, and changing the music controls and song on the same screen will only take one plate.
Considering the safety theme, the upgrade also includes route guidance, which is a feature that lets you know in advance which route to take next time or on the freeway. This will help reduce the chances of “four lanes being a quarter of a mile”. Happy (and safe) driving!