Waze Rolls Out Custom Starting Points for Easier Route Planning

Waze is expanding the rollout of a feature that allows users to manually choose their starting location when planning a trip. Previously, the app defaulted to the user's current GPS location unless they used the Leave Later planning tool, which only provided predicted travel times rather than live road conditions.

With the new interface, a field appears at the top of the route planning screen where drivers can tap their current location and swap it for any searched address or saved place. The app also adds an arrow button to reverse the origin and destination instantly, immediately recalculating the route on the map using live traffic data.

The capability originally surfaced for early testers in September before entering a much wider public deployment in November. A pop-up notification inside the app alerts drivers when the capability is enabled on their device.

For years, drivers had to rely on cumbersome workarounds or switch over to Google Maps whenever they wanted to calculate travel times between two remote locations, such as estimating a commute from an office to an evening dinner.

By adopting a setup similar to Google Maps, Waze closes one of its longest-standing usability gaps while maintaining its core focus on live crowdsourced traffic alerts and community hazard reports.