Although there are a few navigation apps that are compatible with Android Auto, the one we use is Waze and I have already told you that the reason for this is its community: they allow me to almost instantly see the milestones that occur on the road, from radars to dead animals to police officers or remains of vehicles. While installing Waze on your phone and seeing it later on Android Auto isn’t much of a mystery and the app itself is set up pretty well by default (e.g. it avoids unpaved roads or crossroads difficult), there are other Waze settings I’ve configured and recommend for their usefulness, functionality, and how they’ve improved my experience as a user.
To use: go ahead that the configuration in Android Auto directly on the console is quite limited to the bare minimum, so most options must be selected from the phone to then be displayed on the car screen.
Don’t be overwhelmed by so many reviews
The first time you put Waze in Android Auto, you’ll find an assistant who talks at all hours: that it turns right, stays in the left lane, radar alert… although some of these indications are useful to me, others are excessive and end up tiring.
Precisely one of the few things that can be adjusted from the car console are the sounds and, as you can see from these lines, you have three options: ‘yes’, ‘alerts’ and ‘no’. In my case I selected ‘Alerts’ so I can look at the screen once in a while to know when I should deviate or just if I’m fine, but just in case there is an incident on the road like a radar, let me know by voice.
Choose the assistant you like the most
The default voice assistant is Jane, a lady who speaks English, but it’s likely that you prefer to be spoken to in your mother tongue. Similarly, you can also choose whether the one giving you directions is a male or female voice.
You can choose all this from the application, by pressing the icon with the three stripes in the upper left corner, following the route ‘settings‘ > ‘sound and voice‘ and there by clicking on ‘waze voice‘. In our case, we chose Leire, who speaks Basque.
Configure your home and business addresses
Configuring home and work addresses as soon as possible is going to be useful both for writing at least two addresses that are probably frequent for you on the one hand and on the other hand in the latest update Google has reduced the commands voices that we can use with Waze in Android Auto by reducing them to two: moving around at home or at work.
This is one of the first and most important settings recommended to be used in Waze. To do this, press the three lines icon at the top once you have registered and enter the sections ‘Home‘ And ‘Job‘. When you are there, write down the exact address and save it. From then on, you can quickly select that destination both with the keyboard and with voice commands.
Don’t overshoot the throttle
I won’t fool you: it’s easy for me to forget the legal speed of the road and I tend to step on it, so for me constantly seeing the stipulated speed and the one I’m going is ideal to avoid trouble and fines.
But sometimes I’m focused and not looking at the screen, so it doesn’t hurt to have an extra warning sound to reinforce the warning. This can be done from the ‘Settings’ of the app, by entering the ‘Speedometer‘ and there, check that in addition to the option ‘show on map‘ is checked and ‘show speed limit‘ is set to ‘Always‘, enter ‘Speed limit’ and activate a band from which the alarm will be triggered. You can choose between the number of km/h above the limit to be warned or with a percentage. You also have a ‘Speed Alert’ which warns if we exceed the stipulated limit.
no highways please
As I mentioned in the intro, Waze comes with a suitable default configuration, but everyone can adjust it according to their needs, preferences and tastes and one of mine is not to pay more when I travel, especially if the alternative to the freeway is a freeway.
To prevent Waze from showing me routes that include sections that require me to open the wallet, I set it up as follows: ‘settings‘ > ‘Navigation‘ > ‘Avoid toll roads‘.
Goodbye Wazers
That so many people have Waze installed on their phone and use it to drive is a good thing, as unavoidable events on the road are quickly notified. But Waze has configured its app to show other users’ icons on the road (which they can customize by the way) and while it’s visually entertaining, it can get distracted and divert us from what is important.
This can be easily removed: in ‘settings‘ > ‘map display‘, uncheck the box ‘Show Wazers‘ and so you won’t see them anymore.
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