Waze continues making the ho-hum experience of driving more fun as it’s currently rolling out new customization options to its mobile app, including Zodiac themes.
With the Zodiac collection (opens in new tab), you can have the in-app car icon reflect your astrological sign, like a red vehicle for Cancer with its symbol on the roof, and swap out the navigation guide to a voice specifically tailored to your theme. For example, the Aries voice is more energetic than the others, whereas Libra is more chill.
Mood icons can also match their sign for other Waze users to see a lion for Leo or a fish for Pisces. Each of the three options can be enabled on its own so icons can be changed while the navigating voice remains unchanged.
Do keep in mind the update has a few bugs. The voices for Leo and Sagittarius didn’t appear when we first tried out the update, but they did once we relaunched Waze. To enable the Zodiac themes, you can hop on over to Google’s post regarding the update and click the link at the bottom to force the changes. Otherwise, you'll need to meet the app requirements of having driven at least 100 miles while using Waze.
Customize Your Drive
Not restricted is the other half of the update which is the official launch of Customize Your Drive, making 12 previously limited content packs into permanent fixtures for Waze.
Similar to the Zodiac themes, these change the navigation voice, moods, and vehicle icon, but with a bigger emphasis on pop culture. You can have either pop stars Christina Aguilera, Kehlani, or Boy George take you to your doctor’s appointment, for example.
Waze’s collaboration with Halo Infinite returns allowing fans to choose either Master Chief or the game’s antagonist Escharum to be their navigator (yes, the Warthog and Ghost vehicle icons are back). And if you’re in the mood for cringe-worthy dad jokes, the Cats or Dogs theme will bombard you with puns so bad you’ll want to throw your phone out the window.
Joking aside, this Waze update is pretty cute with something in it for everyone. Both the Zodiac collection and Customize Your Drive feature are available to all users in the United States; however only the latter is available globally. Google states there are plans to expand the astrological themes to “more markets in the future” but didn’t give an exact date.
Be sure to check out TechRadar’s recently updated list of the best free Android apps for 2023 spanning over 11 full pages.
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