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Waze is finally coming to Apple CarPlay’s new multi-screen dashboard. This will certainly be good news for fans of the Google-owned navigation app, who have been waiting for more than a year for it to work with the improved and upgraded version of CarPlay.
A tipster who is testing the new feature in beta sent us this image of Waze running in CarPlay’s new Split View feature. Apple rolled out the new dashboard as part of last year’s iOS 13 software update, but it was limited to only work with Apple Maps at the time. Previously, CarPlay required bouncing between different screens to see a track name while getting directions to a destination. With Split View, you can see a map, which is currently playing on the car stereo, and the next element of guidance to your destination in one place.
Apple finally released iOS 13.4 earlier this year, which introduced the ability for third-party companies to add dashboard mode support to their own mapping apps. It took Google until August 2020 to implement support for Google Maps. And now it looks like Waze (which is also owned by Google) will follow soon.
A spokesperson for Waze has not confirmed the beta testing, so we don’t know when the shipping company plans to officially announce the rollout. “In fact, we have nothing to share at the moment. Will be sure to keep you posted if / when we do, ”the spokesperson said in an email. Waze has 140 million monthly active users who travel more than 24 billion miles (40 billion kilometers) each month. The company was founded in Israel in 2008 and was later acquired by Google in 2013.
The beta also features the first support for lane guidance in Waze for iOS, the tipster said. This handy feature recommends which lane you should be in when entering or exiting a freeway, for example. It is also useful when navigating complex intersections or highway mergers. The tipster described the possibility of using Waze in CarPlay’s new split-screen dashboard as “really smooth” and “revolutionary”.
Like many businesses, Waze has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has emptied roads around the world and put many cities on lockdown. As shelter-in-place and work from home become the new normal, fewer people are using Waze for their daily boating needs. Fewer eyeballs on the app means less ad revenue for the company, which led Waze to lay off 5% of its global workforce, or roughly 30 people, in September. Most recently, the company’s CEO, Noam Bardin, announced he would step down in early 2021.
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