Waze now supports carpool lanes, voice commands, and routes optimized for motorcyclists

Waze just received some pretty great new features in the last major update before the holidays as it now brings support for carpool lanes, motorcyclists, and voice control.

Outlined in a blog post, Waze promotes this as the largest update ever coming to both iOS and Android.

Motorcycle vehicle type option

The first major feature is support for a new vehicle type: motorcycles. This offers two new Waze moods, specialized routing, and more. It will actually find the best route optimized for those on two wheels. Because of this, projected arrival times are now more accurate than ever.

To update your vehicle to a motorbike head to Settings > Vehicle Type > Motorcycles in the app.

HOV route support

The second major feature is support for HOV, or carpool lanes. This is a first for a mobile navigation app.

Support for these speedy lanes means there will be more route options, and more accurate arrival times.

Unfortunately, this isn’t available for everyone quite yet. It is limited to 22 markets in the US, as well as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. You can view the full list in Waze’s blog post.

Talk to Waze

Lastly, a much-requested feature is voice control. Now you can chat with Waze hands free. You can do everything from reporting a traffic jam, to getting directions home.

Waze has been increasingly popular lately, but it is still missing a crucial feature on iOS: CarPlay support.

Currently, Apple doesn’t allow third-party navigation apps to integrate with CarPlay which makes it a bummer for iOS users who would like to use Waze on their infotainment system display.

Apple has made quite the list of improvements lately with maps in iOS 11 and brought many new features to CarPlay. Maybe next year will be the year they open it up to additional app types.

So do you use Waze? Are you stoked for this latest update? Let us know down below.

You can download Waze for free from the App Store.