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How to turn off Waze

It can be worth letting the app run when you're not navigating, but your battery and phone bill may pay the price.
By

Published onApril 7, 2023

Google’s Waze remains one of the most popular navigation apps. If you’re new to it, though, it’s not necessarily obvious how to end directions, or how to prevent it from running in the background. We’ll explain how to do both below for Android and iPhone users.

QUICK ANSWER

To end Waze navigation when the app is open, tap on the ETA bar, then Stop. To prevent it from running in the background, however, you'll need to force-quit the app.


JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS

How to turn off Waze directions

To end an active route while the app is open, simply tap the ETA bar at the bottom of the screen, then Stop.

How to completely turn off the Waze app on Android

Regardless of whether you’re actively navigating somewhere, Waze tends to remain running in the background on Android devices until you do something about it. This can be useful — potentially alerting you to problems in your area — but it can also consume extra data and power.

The most reliable way to completely stop Waze is to force-close it in Android’s All Apps view, also known as the app switcher or task switcher. On modern Android devices:

  • Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to the middle, then hold for a moment until the All Apps view appears.
  • Swipe the Waze app upwards, offscreen.
  • When you’re done, tap on a blank space to return to the homescreen.

How to completely turn off the Waze app on an iPhone

While Apple is a little more conservative about letting apps run in the background, it still does, even making special allowances for navigation — after all, Waze would be useless if it stopped everything the moment you switched to Spotify to change your soundtrack.

You can kill Waze’s background operation on iPhones the same way you would on Android devices:

  • Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to the middle and wait for the app switcher to appear.
  • Swipe the Wyze app upwards, offscreen.
  • Tap on a blank space to go back to the homescreen.

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