Waze, the navigation app that so many drivers turn to in an attempt to tackle nightmarish traffic in their cities, sometimes does not perform well on Android Auto, losing the GPS connection just a few feet after starting to drive.
But in the end, Android Auto isn’t the culprit this time around and the one to blame is actually the mobile device itself.
First, let’s see what’s going on and what’s causing the problem.
In most cases, users have complained that Waze loses its GPS connection around 100 meters after starting to drive. Although many don’t notice it, everything shows up when the mobile device automatically locks itself, so theoretically, this is when Waze loses the GPS connection. Unlocking the device brings things back to normal, but of course, it’s by no means a practical workaround as you can’t just drive with the screen on.
According to this thread on Google’s forums, the problem only arises on Xiaomi phones, and given that Waze loses the GPS connection when the devices enter a locked state, it’s pretty clear that it’s the system. operation that closes the navigation application.
And it turns out that all shutdown is for battery optimization reasons, which means you have to configure Waze as an exception to allow the permanent GPS connection.
To do this, unlock your Xiaomi smartphone, go to settings and find the apps section. Open Waze and in the Battery saver menu, choose it No restrictions to make sure that the Google owned navigation app can work properly at all times.
This seems to fix the issues for all Xiaomi phone owners struggling with Waze on Android Auto, and if you have a device from a different brand, just be sure to check the app’s battery settings.
