User-Unfriendly Behavior

[AlanOfTheBerg]

In the area of persistent bugs (despite previous reports), the popup notifications for traffic cameras do not honor the settings. Even though I have notifications for cameras disabled in settings

There is no setting to not show popup warnings for anything, including cameras. There is an option for what to display on THE MAP, but there is no setting to turn off the alerts.

Every morning it pops up a dialog asking me if I'm driving to work and tries to turn on navigation. Same on return in the evening "Looks like you're driving home..." This is probably the one area of my life where I (and most people) don't need any help.

Waze is always learning from your driving, though you may need to read the FAQ answer to understand why it may still not take your preferred route. Waze doesn't learn routes, but destinations and it does a really good job knowing where you might be going based on location, day and time of day. The "auto learn" option is actually just mis-named, and we've requested for over a year they just change it to "prompt to route to frequent destinations" which makes more sense and is actually what that feature does.

Another thing which I've seen a lot of comments about is the endless popups for accidents, traffic jams, etc. that are not along my route and sometimes are much farther away than the "radius" I've specified in settings.

These popups have always been within the radius of your route, not just your location. That's how it's designed and it works like that just fine. Also, if you have "group popups" turned on in settings, those will popup regardless of distance. Again, by design. Those popups are actually more annoying because you don't need to be stopped for them to pop.

The icons for WAZERs that are off the road but forgot to switch WAZE off (presumably in their homes watching the football game) are just clutter on the screen. WAZE should not display the location of WAZERS that are clearly off any documented roadway or have been (relatively) stationary for say, more than 15 minutes. Again, this has been mentioned repeatedly in this forum with no response.

User locations are delayed by usually up to at least 5 minutes, so just because you see them one place, doesn't mean they are actually there. This is a privacy feature. I'm not sure about "off any documented roadway" makes a lot of sense because there are often Wazers paving new roads which aren't yet on the map and they would show "off the roadway." There will also be no more than I think 40 Wazers in any given view on the map. If you don't like the Wazers clutter, turn off the Wazers option in the "show on map" settings.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

Ok, my bad. I misinterpreted the show on map settings for cameras. However, I have "show on map" turned off for cameras and they show up anyway, along with popups and voice alerts (unless voice is turned off totally).

The cameras will have the radiating blue highlight when they alert, but the little icon with the red/green light is the camera icon which should show or not. If that is still showing even though you have it off, that's a bug. As for the future, Waze knows that users desire some more granular settings for various things, such as types of alerts to give, and how to present them (popup and/or verbal alert). We don't know what the plans are at this point.

It doesn't mean I don't want to know about the ones that are actually on the road. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater by turning Wazers display completely doesn't seem like the right solution.

Due to the privacy(ish) feature, Wazers will currently appear on the map for a time after shutdown. It would likely be beneficial to the display to have a feature which simply removes them immediately upon app shutdown.

[raygduncan]

Waze is a cool app with great potential but it has a number of mal-features that have persisted through several releases and either seem like inability to respond to feedback or UI features designed by programmers because they think they would be cool and don't have to live with them.

In the area of persistent bugs (despite previous reports), the popup notifications for traffic cameras do not honor the settings. Even though I have notifications for cameras disabled in settings, I get alerts for them all along my route to and from work. I know where these cameras are, the alerts are just a distraction. The voice notifications for stop light cameras can't be disabled either, except by totally disabling voice for everything, which is counterproductive because then you don't get voice alerts for accidents along the route. Even disabling voice alerts doesn't totally work because it interrupts a bluetooth music player connection without saying anything - it's as though it tries to say something and then realizes after it already suspended the bluetooth music player that it isn't supposed to do it. This issue with stop light cameras is extremely annoying and almost enough on its own to make me give up on the app.

Every morning it pops up a dialog asking me if I'm driving to work and tries to turn on navigation. Same on return in the evening "Looks like you're driving home..." This is probably the one area of my life where I (and most people) don't need any help. It feels like a "clever" feature thought up by a programmer without any reality check. The only way to disable this is to disable the "auto learning" feature completely which seems silly. After I've dismissed this popup a few days in a row, WAZE ought to get the message and stop presenting it every morning .When I want help with navigation, I will tell WAZE so. If I DO say yes to the "Looks like you're driving to work" dialog, WAZE makes it clear that it doesn't "learn" anything from my past driving. It persistently tries to take me by a different route (and not a smart one either) than the one I've been driving every single day since I first started using WAZE.

Another thing which I've seen a lot of comments about is the endless popups for accidents, traffic jams, etc. that are not along my route and sometimes are much farther away than the "radius" I've specified in settings. This has not gotten better in the latest version and actually seems to be worse than it was before. Often these notifications are for things that are miles away to the side of my route or even behind me along my route. These are really no help at all. If WAZE can't limit these notifications to your current direction of travel along your route and within the radius in settings, we should just get rid of these. It's really enough to just display this stuff on the map and let you touch the little icon to get more information on a specific problem.

The icons for WAZERs that are off the road but forgot to switch WAZE off (presumably in their homes watching the football game) are just clutter on the screen. WAZE should not display the location of WAZERS that are clearly off any documented roadway or have been (relatively) stationary for say, more than 15 minutes. Again, this has been mentioned repeatedly in this forum with no response.

[raygduncan]

Ok, my bad. I misinterpreted the show on map settings for cameras. However, I have "show on map" turned off for cameras and they show up anyway, along with popups and voice alerts (unless voice is turned off totally). This seems like an area which needs more thought and attention by Waze to allow a user to fine-tune voice, popups, and map display together 0r separately, depending on taste. One person's delicious rich crowd-sourced information is another person's distraction. I want to know about traffic cams if I'm driving cross country but not when I'm traversing the same 10 mile route to work that I drive hundreds of times per year.

>there are often Wazers paving new roads

No doubt this is true in some areas, but not in Santa Monica where there's really nowhere to even put a new road.... Again a feature that would benefit from some thought by Waze and the ability to fine tune. Sometimes driving home half the Wazers on the display are pretty clearly in parking lots, stores, or apartment buildings. It doesn't mean I don't want to know about the ones that are actually on the road. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater by turning Wazers display completely doesn't seem like the right solution.