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.
You Can Now Add Comedian Nate Bargatze’s Voice on Waze
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 toGoogle’s blog announcement, Bargatze transcends your standard voice options by incorporating “witty commentary, relatable anecdotes and a healthy dose of Southern charm.”
To take advantage of this or other limited release voices, head over to the Waze app.
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 lastingdebate 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.
