Choosing the voice for your navigation app is a great way to make your commute more bearable. While this selection typically comes down to a personal preference in tone or cadence, the popular Waze app is now offering a voice that does more than just read you directions—it will tell jokes, too.
With a new celebrity voice, Waze can bring some comedy to your commute. For a limited time, you’ll be able to select the voice of Nate Bargatze, a Grammy-nominated stand-up comedian from Nashville, to articulate your directions on Waze.
While the special voice setting is available globally, it only reads directions in the English language.
According to Google’s blog announcement, Bargatze transcends your standard voice options by incorporating “witty commentary, relatable anecdotes and a healthy dose of Southern charm.”
How to Download New Voices on Waze
To take advantage of this or other limited release voices, head over to the Waze app.
- First, make sure your Waze app is up to date.
- According to Google, you should then see a “banner in the left-side column menu of the app” that you can tap to apply the new voice.
- You can also change the voice for your directions in your settings by tapping the Settings icon > Voice & sound > Waze voice.
You should see a wealth of options in your Waze voice list, including multiple languages, celebrities, and characters.
A New Age of Entertainment
Celebrity voices are nothing new for Waze. Famous figures like Christina Aguilera and the Jonas Brothers have lent their voices to the navigation app, in addition to other non-proprietary options, like my personal favorite, “Spicy Gingerbread Man.” Of course, each offers something slightly different, and a comedian like Bargatze could add a healthy dose of laughter to the day.
It will be interesting to see if celebrity voices expand to other navigation apps, like Google Maps or Apple Maps. The feature is certainly a fun way for celebrities to promote projects and reach more audiences. As for the user, it’s a way to stay entertained and find joy in technology. That being said, driving with both comedic navigation audio and a podcast could be a hat on a hat. If you’re someone who doesn’t listen to music or podcasts in the car, then this could be perfect (and please teach me your ways).
In terms of the lasting debate between Google Maps and Waze, fun voice options are another characteristic that sets the two apart. While Waze is also known for superior crowd-sourced traffic reporting, Google has now integrated Waze’s incident reports into Google Maps. Maybe, celebrity voices will be the next thing that Google Maps absorbs. As the owner of both Google Maps and Waze, Google wins either way.