Google announced in late July that Google Maps and Waze will finally share incident reports, a feature many people dreamed of. After all, Google owns both Google Maps and Waze, so implementing this sort of interoperability should be a no-brainer. Incident reports are the reason why Waze became so popular with drivers, as they can improve navigation immensely.
Google added incident reporting to Google Maps a few years ago, but the feature wasn’t close to the real thing, Waze’s richer incident reports feature. It took years for Google to make the two apps talk to each other, but the shared incident reports feature wasn’t available to drivers immediately after Google announced it.
A few months later, Google Maps users started spotting Waze incident reports. This suggests the feature is rolling out more widely, and you can finally take advantage of Waze reports inside Google Maps.
A Reddit user posted the following image showing an incident report from Waze. The “From Waze drivers” identifier tells you the notification originates outside the Google Maps environment.
The incident report in the image is a police sighting that a Waze driver reported. The Google Maps driver can confirm police presence, if they’re still there, or say the police are gone.
There’s also a timer on the notification, which means it’ll disappear after a few seconds. You can also tap the “X” for the report to go away.
Others responding to the thread confirmed seeing similar reports.
The feature should also work the other way around. Google Maps incident reports should show up in Waze and feature similar identifiers. However, we don’t have screenshots showing such an incident report notification in Waze.
Then again, Waze already has a loyal community of users who are already trained in reporting incidents and confirming them. They’d be more likely to report a traffic issue before someone on Google Maps does it.
In July, Google announced that the shared Google Maps/Waze incident reports would be available globally on Android, iPhone, cars with Google built-in, Android Auto, and Apple CarPlay.
If Google Maps users are now seeing the incident reports sharing feature in action on phones, it should be available everywhere else where Google Maps and Waze are available. As always, you might want to update your navigation apps to the latest versions to ensure you have access to the latest features.