The New Waze Is Fantastic: A New Important Feature Launches on CarPlay

And now, Waze is bringing another important feature to CarPlay.

If you've been using the app on a mobile device, you probably know that Waze can estimate how long you'll sit in a traffic jam.

The mobile version of Waze displays a traffic jam bar estimate on the left side of the screen, with a timer getting live updates as conditions change and you move closer to the end of the traffic jam.

The feature debuted in 2015 but remained exclusive to mobile devices, with Waze somehow believing that showing similar information on Android Auto and CarPlay wouldn't make sense. I might be wrong, but I think the company experimented with a CarPlay integration many years ago, but most recently, traffic jam wait times have been missing from the bigger screen in the cabin.

The Google-owned company is now fixing this. CarPlay has started showing estimates of how long you'll wait in a traffic jam at the bottom of the screen. The notification was designed to be unintrusive, so it only shows the typical Waze traffic jam icon and an estimate of how long you'll spend in the traffic jam. The notification uses a red background, which is the color that Waze uses to label heavy traffic.

The estimate updates like on a mobile device, so once the conditions improve and you move closer to the destination and toward the end of the traffic jam, you should see the time updating on the screen, too. I specifically disconnected my phone from CarPlay to compare the estimate with the data on the iPhone, and the estimates match – don't laugh, I've seen bugs worse than this, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

The feature isn't widely available yet. My wife doesn't see the traffic jam wait times estimates on a similar configuration, and it doesn't seem like the availability depends on the Waze version installed on the iPhone. We're both running the same version, but she didn't get the feature, so Waze probably uses a phased rollout approach to enable the new functionality and collect feedback simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the new Waze is great, as the parent company finally seems fully committed to improving the experience with the app. The simplified reporting experience makes perfect sense, as it's now much easier to send a report, especially when driving on the highway, about vehicles stopped on the shoulder, or police traps.

The speed bump integration is also helpful, especially if you drive in a city where you're more likely to find them. The sharp curve warnings make every trip safer when driving on unfamiliar routes.