But on the other hand, Waze itself keeps acting up on CarPlay every now and then, and most recently, the app has started freezing or failing to close properly when disconnecting the mobile device.

Users on reddit confirm that in many cases, Waze no longer updates the map until they manually unlock their iPhones. In theory, this may not be a Waze problem, as iOS itself could suspend the app’s process when running in the background and therefore block it from retrieving the location in real-time.

Similar problems have also been encountered in the past, but just when Waze seemed to work properly, the latest iOS update landed with more such struggles.

Someone explains that Waze also keeps running in the background after the iPhone is disconnected from the head unit and CarPlay shuts down. The blue oval indicator in the top left corner on the iPhone stays on, suggesting Waze is still running and tracking the user’s location.

The experience with navigation apps has been very inconsistent since the release of iOS 15 in the fall of 2021. Google Maps, too, encountered various problems, but the app has received several updates lately, and everything feels a lot more polished right now.

In other words, if a fix for all these Waze problems doesn’t land in a timely manner, then users can very well switch to Google Maps, as the app now apparently feels at home on the latest version of iOS. Just make sure your device is fully up-to-date, and the latest versions of iOS and Google Maps are installed.