Waze Gets Some Christmas Magic

The popular navigation app will make you feel like you’re riding Santa's sleigh. The new sound effects will bring a spoon of Christmassy mood to your wheel time.

For the limited time — until the snowy Holiday season is over — you can feel like Santa Claus. The popular navigation app will add the canonical sleigh-bell sounds. As well as Santa’s voice that will provide the route directions.

The app’s official Twitter announced this:

Santa called. He wants his job back. Select your sleigh, voice, and Mood in the app and let Santa guide you on your next drive for another holiday season. 

There are two moods to select from: Santa or Mall Santa. It’s unclear why the latter is classified as Mall Santa. Probably it’s a hint that you’ll do some shopping when the customer flow gets especially crazy in the malls.

Here’s how to enable the Santa mood:

• Open the My Waze category.
• Select the Drive with Santa option.

And voilà, the interior of your car will sparkle with the special Holiday mood. The only thing missing would be your Spotify replaying “The Most Wonderful Time of The Year” over and over.

By last summer’s end, Waze had offered another special mood. You could command the app to tell you directions in the Master Chief’s voice. There were also two vehicle icons in the app, mimicking Ghost and Warthog. 

Sadly, the Halo-themed content was also time-limited. But we expect more game-inspired cameos to come to the app in the future.

Other guest voices that Waze offers include Mr. T, Morgan Freeman, Stephen Colbert, and others. Plus, you can record your own voice to tell yourself directions.

You will need to record a separate phrase for each tab, like “Turn left” or “You’ve arrived”. For that:

• Go to Settings.
• Open the Voice Recorder.

Interestingly, you can also share your exclusive voice directions with other users. And which voice would you love to hear on Waze? Let us know in the comments!