This week Waze began rolling out two new features to make it a little more enjoyable to get around. The first is a new Holiday Mode that'll let you use Santa's voice to get your directions, change your vehicle to Santa's sleigh, and select the Santa Waze Mood.
To enable Holiday Mode in your Waze app, open the settings in the Waze app and tap on "Drive with Santa". You can then turn on whichever of the Holiday Mode features you want to use.
Waze says that Holiday Mode is now live in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, and it'll be available until December 31, 2020.
Also new to Waze is integration with Apple's CarPlay Dashboard (via MacRumors). This feature lets you see your Waze navigation in a split-screen view along with your audio controls and other features.
Previously, CarPlay required you to jump between different apps that you were using. The update to iOS 13 brought CarPlay Dashboard, a split-screen view that shows your map, next directions, and audio controls all on the same display. This feature was originally only available with Apple Maps, but the update to iOS 13.4 opened it up to third-party mapping applications. It was added to Google Maps a few months ago and is now available with Waze, too.
CarPlay Dashboard makes navigating easier and safer, letting you see important info like your map and next steps while also giving you access to your audio controls without having to switch to another application. And so it's good to see that it now works with Waze, which is one of the most popular mapping apps around.