Saw this today in my news feed - Waze private beta on Android Auto is now live! Now I had signed up for the private beta but as it typical they really didn't respond or communicate any of this well. I mean I had to find out from my news feed? You can sign up for the sign up for the Waze Private Beta here. Note that the article says to go to this link but seems to go to the Play Store Beta download of some sort and although I signed up for the Waze Private Beta using the centercode link the other link doesn't work for me. It hints that I'm not set up yet, so I'm not sure if this will work.

Based on the comments in the original article I went over to apkmirror.com and searched for Waze and landed on this page. I've side loaded apks before and you have to OK them temporarily. It's best to allow just this one apk install.

Be sure to heed the warnings in the initial article as betas are typically finicky. For example, it says to uninstall Waze if your have a version greater than 4.24.0.2 and then install 4.24.0.113 beta from the Play Store Beta Channel. The fact that you're going from a .2 -> .113 shows me that they've been doing a lot of builds.

In any event, I first when to update Waze from the Play store, I already had 4.24.0.2 installed, and I could not find any way to install a newer version. So I thought I'd uninstall Waze and try a reinstall and see what version I'd get and it basically hung! Not the phone or anything but it said "uninstalling waze" but never went any further. I exited the Play Store and fired it up again and again, under Waze it said "uninstalling". Ugh. So I rebooted the phone and Waze is no longer there. But I can't find a Waze beta in the Play Store and it only offered 4.24.0.2 again, hence the trip to apkmirror. I also signed up to follow Waze Updates.

The process of getting the APK can be a little ***** for the uninitiated to say the least. So I have put a copy Waze 4.24.0.113 beta on my Google Drive. Use at your own risk!!!.

Note: This may be just me but I was also signed up for AA beta. At one time the AA beta would sport a down arrow on the Direction icon indicating that there are other mapping application you could use but only Google Maps was listed. Recent updates to AA beta have removed the down arrow. So this may not work and I may need to go back to a previous version of AA. My current version is 2.3.716604-release (which seems to indicate I'm no longer a beta tester for AA?).

OK so I went out to my car and tried this out. I'm being detailed here so that any of my steps and workarounds prove to be useful to others.

After installing this Waze Beta on my phone I went out to my car and plugged it in. I tried to connect to AA and it would not do it! It kept telling me to plug in the device. I tried several cables including the one that I have always been using and nothing would work. So I uninstalled the Waze Beta. Still couldn't get AA to connect. I rebooted my phone. That didn't fix it. Tried turning off the car and back on, etc. Nothing would work! Uninstalled AA and reinstalled it. Nothing. Went into AA and removed all of the connected cars. Still couldn't get AA to connect and now my previous connection to my car was broke. Would I no long have AA?!? Yikes!!!

Then I decided to delete my phone from the car and re-pair it. The car immediately recognized my old phone's name. I had long ago renamed that from Chevrolet MyLink -> Blue Thunder as I like to call my car. Up popped Blue Thunder and I figured "Good, it remembered me".

With the Bluetooth re-established I figured everything would work right? Nope. Same problems. So this time I deleted the phone from the car and I unpaired the Blue Thunder Bluetooth connection on my phone. Toggled Bluetooth off then on then re-paired it to the car and renamed it back to Blue Thunder. AA then recognized it and I was able to get AA working again.

Next I reinstalled the Waze Beta (remember I removed it). I was concerned because AA still wasn't sporting a down arrow but after installing the Waze Beta and firing up AA a down arrow appeared and I was able to select Waze! It finally worked!

And, as they say, pics or it didn't happen!

 

Still holding out hope that Waze will eventually support Apple CarPlay. Probably will never happen...

 

Would this work on a 2015, 1lt without navigation?

 

Navigation doesn't matter. The 2014's and 2015's simply lack the hardware to do AA.

Yet another reason to dump the iPhone and get an Android!

 

Man, I saw this too in the feed. I just can't believe how slow the development is for this.
Wireless is going to be a long ways off.

 

Thanks for the link. I filled out the beta form and received this from Waze ...

Hello,
Thanks for applying to be a Waze Beta Tester!
We appreciate your patience as we review your application. Look out for an email from us in the upcoming week with more information.
PLEASE NOTE! We're currently out of free spots for new iOS Beta Testers, but we'd be happy to add you to our waiting list and contact you in the future.
Thanks,
The Waze Beta team

 

Can anyone do me a favor see if you can fast forward tracks in Google Music?

 

This really isn't apropos for this thread which is pretty much just about the new Waze Beta, however, no you can't fast forward tracks in GPM. That's a function or rather a limitation of GPM, not AA. I use BeyondPod for podcasts. That player has a function to set what happens when the user does a Forward/Rewind. I've set that to go 30 seconds Forward/Rewind instead of next track. so BeyondPod does it but GPM doesn't because that's not how they did it. Talk to Google about that. I'd suggest their product forums...

Yeah I got that too. What I never got and email in the upcoming week however.

The part about iOS beta seems interesting. Perhaps Waze is coming to CarPlay!

 

I didn't have nearly the trouble you did. I downloaded the beta, installed it on my phone, plugged into the car, and it worked the first time.

 

Very nice for the Android crowd.

 

Pretty cool-I hope this works for you Android boys!

 

Hmmm... Well I tried out Waze on AA and it was OK. Found a few bugs but unfortunately I can't report them since Centercode doesn't think I'm registered yet. I'll mention them here in case any other beta testers are around and if I ever get registered I can pick them up from here and file them.

1. When I first got in my car to try Waze I had sent a route to my cell phone to see if Waze would pick it up. I had problems starting Waze. It was start, paint the screen then in a few seconds it would fade away and start again. Probably was just crashing repeatedly.
2. I believe I had to disconnect my phone for the madness of #1 to stop. After reconnecting Waze did come up but I had lost my route. I think Google Maps picked it up. In any event I put the destination in (interestingly Waze allows you to type in a destination - however I was parked at the time). At this point I had both Google Maps and Waze running at the same time! On the main AA screen I had two navigation cards, one from GM telling me what my next turn was and one from Waze telling me what my next turn was!
3. Many times in Waze the hardware Back button did nothing. It works if you open Waze drawer but it doesn't go back from Show Route.
4. Speaking of Show Route - GM's Show Route is vastly superior to Waze's. GM shows you a birds eye view of the map with the three routes drawn and the current or best route highlighted. Waze shows you 3 cards with text saying "via I15" or whatever.
5. Never got an alert for anything even though I had sound on alerts and just sound on at one time. This for me totally defeats any so called advantage that Waze has over GM.
6. No way to set the volume of spoken directions or alerts! GM has a setting in the app for soft, normal and loud. Also, I discovered that cam30era was right, if you change the volume while your getting turn by turn voice instructions you change the "Voice Volume". I can only think that the car itself has some voice volume and AA's settings will go from there so that AA normal voice volume is probably whatever the car's voice volume is and soft is less and louder is more. In any event, Waze doesn't do any of that. All that happens is the radio volume increases or decreases and AFAICT there is no setting in Waze to adjust the voice volume.
7. The alerts on icons on the map are pretty good and with the larger screen it's easier to report things like cops or accidents. What I don't understand (and I'm not a heavy Waze user) is I can tap on say "Car on side of the road" and click the thumbs up to say "Yeah that's right. There is a car on the side of the road" but there's no thumbs down to say "that report is bogus". I would think that that signal would be very valuable to Waze.

If any legitimate Waze Beta Tester wishes to submit these then by all means, but let me know so I don't double submit.

 

The problem is that it's really the other way around. Apple would have to open up CarPlay to support 3rd party navigation apps which they are currently not doing. Then waze would have to actually develop the app. Sadly I think the former is very unlikely.

I have to admit my satisfaction with Apple has been very low lately; if this comes out of beta in a reasonable time frame a S8 might be in my near future.

 

You Rock - Thanks for the write-up! A simple uninstall of previous version of Waze and install of the new APK worked great on my Google Pixel!

 

Glad to be of assistance!

Now could you spare say 100 HP? I have a Z51 with only 465 HP and I'm jealous of your Z06's 650 HP! M7 too! Nice...

 

haha, thanks buddy! Those Z51 are pretty quick also!

 

Loooks great

 

Loooks great

 

I just cannot get this to work. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

When the beta version (from your Google Drive) was downloaded onto my phone, the version of Waze shows as 4.24.0.113. Should that version number be followed by "beta"?

 

I can't figure out what you're doing wrong either... Probably because you never mentioned exactly what you are doing, what you expected to happen and how it failed to meet your expectation!

Mine doesn't say beta.

I actually had uninstalled this for two reasons. First, I don't think I'm officially on the Waze Beta - I can't log in nor report problems. Secondly, twice now this apparently broke everything (basically would not connect ever) requiring multiple reboots and reinstallations of various software and Bluetooth connections.

That said, a few other observations I've noticed:

• There is no estimated time of arrival. I use this in GM all the time. It tells you what the time is expected to be when you arrive. As such I can tell if I need to rush or not. Waze doesn't have this.
• No indication of traffic. Oh, yeah you and report traffic and get notified of a traffic jam I guess (note - no notifications are working for me at all!). However GM actually colors the route based on the amount of traffic. So you can see ahead of time that there's an upcoming traffic jam and know when to slow down. Even better, in GM the Route Overview screen shows the actual mapped route and colors that route. So you can see, if say you're driving from San Diego -> Bay Area that there are many red spots in LA.