Waze Traffic Lights Are Live, but Most Drivers Still Cannot See Them

Waze traffic lights are starting to appear along routes in the navigation app, putting a small but long-requested feature into drivers’ hands. The rollout is moving slowly enough that most Wazers still cannot see a single signal, several months after testing first appeared.

The new icons, small traffic-light symbols along the active route, work the same way Google Maps and Apple Maps already show signals. They are a permanent map feature, the kind of fixed road data Waze has long left to its sister app. Waze has stayed largely quiet on the schedule, leaving drivers to discover the feature on their morning commute.

How the Traffic-Light Icon Works in Waze

The traffic-light icon in Waze appears along the route the driver is currently navigating, not at every intersection in the area. The display mirrors how Google Maps already shows signals: only on the path ahead, and only when navigation is active. Drivers are not alerted by sound; the cue is visual, a heads-up to slow down, change lanes, or prepare for a turn before reaching a light that may sit far down a straightaway or just past a curve.

The feature works the way Waze’s existing speed-limit icons do, with the icon appearing on the map as the driver approaches a known signal. Voice instructions can also be decorated, with map editors able to configure phrases like “turn right after the traffic light” or “at the traffic light, turn left” per intersection. Per autoevolution, the on-screen count is capped at three when turn-by-turn is not active. It keeps the map readable.

Why Most Drivers Still Cannot See It

The rollout is uneven for two reasons: a server-side switch on Waze’s side, and a map that does not yet have enough traffic lights drawn in. Both are bottlenecks, and the second is the slower of the two.

The feature is tied to a gradual server-side rollout, not just the version of the app on a user’s phone, Digital Trends reports. Waze has not published a schedule and has remained tight-lipped on availability, per autoevolution. Drivers running the latest version of Waze may still see no traffic lights in their area, and there is no setting to flip to enable them locally.

The bigger bottleneck is the map itself, and the map editors who build it. Traffic lights are a permanent road feature, treated the same as speed bumps. They cannot be added by regular users; map editors must place them on the map by hand. In the United States, Waze allows editors of rank 3 or above to add traffic lights to the segments they have access to, and the wider Waze community has been working through the country’s intersections in WME, Waze’s Map Editor. Areas with no mapped traffic lights will show no icons, no matter how up-to-date the app is.

• Tested: Waze first showed traffic lights in app builds in December 2025
• Geographic: First spotted in Israel; now appearing in the United States and Canada
• Cap: Up to 3 traffic-light icons on screen when turn-by-turn is inactive, per autoevolution
• Editor rule: U.S. map editors of rank 3+ can add traffic lights; higher-ranked roads require higher-ranked editors
• Status: Waze has not published a public schedule for a full worldwide rollout

How the Rollout Reached the US from Israel

Waze’s traffic-light feature took longer to reach the production app than the icon suggests. The first public signs came in December 2025, when Waze appeared to be testing the feature in early builds. Reporting from Carnegie Mellon University’s Safety21 publication, citing Israeli outlet GeekTime, said the icons were appearing for some users in Israel, mostly in navigation or cruise mode, with no public rollout at that point.

Waze had been moving toward the feature for longer than the testing. A feature request for “display traffic lights, stop signs, and other important road signs” was filed on Waze’s feedback platform in June 2024, per autoevolution, and is still visible as the original feature request for traffic lights. Waze’s first response in September 2024 said the idea was “on the roadmap.”

In March 2025, the company reversed course and said the suggestion did not fit its roadmap. A month later, the response was updated again to say Waze planned to work on displaying traffic lights “in the near future.” By May 2025, the feature was marked “planned,” a public sign it had received final approval.

The testing has been on-and-off since. Through the first half of 2026, drivers in the US started spotting the icons in casual Reddit threads. A thread on r/waze this week pulled together several users who had been seeing the feature for anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months, with at least one user, u/yayoshorti, sharing a screenshot of traffic lights in the US. Waze has not officially announced the feature, and its support team is now answering the same question, when it will appear, with a short, rolling answer.

Traffic lights are being rolled out gradually to all North American (US & CAN) users starting today. The rest of the world will see this feature…

1. June 2024: Feature request filed on Waze’s feedback platform for traffic lights, stop signs, and other road signs
2. September 2024: Waze marks the request as “on the roadmap”
3. March 2025: Waze updates the request to say the work does not fit its roadmap
4. April 2025: Waze reverses again, saying it plans to work on traffic lights “in the near future”
5. May 2025: The request is marked “planned”
6. December 2025: First public reports of the feature in Waze builds, in Israel
7. June 2026: Reddit threads show US drivers seeing the feature; Waze’s support page says the rollout is active in North America

Waze’s Quiet Move Toward Permanent Map Features

The traffic-light icon is small, but the move it represents is not. Waze built its reputation on crowd-sourced, real-time reports: crashes, speed traps, police sightings, debris in the road. The data lived in the moment, fed by drivers hitting buttons on their dashboards, and the map behind it was thinner. Permanent features like traffic lights, signals that are always there whether anyone is reporting them or not, were not Waze’s forte. That is the territory of Google Maps and Apple Maps, both of which already show traffic lights along routes.

Waze’s parent company, Google, ships both apps. The fact that the Waze version of the feature is now appearing, slowly, suggests Waze is being pulled toward the same structured map data its sister app already has. Mapping traffic lights by editor hand, the approach Waze is taking, is the kind of work Google Maps’ machine-learning pipelines have handled at scale for years. Waze is choosing a slower, more human-led path. That keeps the data quality in the hands of the community, but it also explains why the rollout is still months away from reaching every user, even after the company approved the feature in May 2025.

Stop Signs Are Next on Waze’s Map

The traffic-light rollout is the first of two features Waze has been planning. Stop signs are next, and the company has already hinted at their addition on its feedback platform. Both are expected to work on every device Waze runs on, including Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which means the same icons should appear whether a driver is using the phone on a dash mount or running Waze through a car head unit.

There is no public date for the stop-sign launch, and Waze has not said when the traffic-light rollout will reach every country. The official statement on the gradual rollout from the Waze support team says it is active in North America, with the rest of the world still to follow. autoevolution has reported that the company is likely to finish the traffic-light rollout this year. Once that is done, the addition of stop signs is the next update drivers will see.

For now, the practical advice is to keep the app updated and not assume it is broken if the icons do not appear. The feature is rolling out on Waze’s side, and the rest depends on how many traffic lights have been mapped in your area.

What to Try if Your City Has No Lights Yet

The map is the bottleneck, so the most useful thing a regular driver can do is to nudge the local mapping community. Waze has documented the feature publicly, with how map editors add traffic lights laid out in a Wazeopedia guide for the United States, including serial numbers, voice-instruction settings, and the rank rules.

Here is the shortest path for a non-editor:

1. Update the Waze app to the latest version and check on a route you drive often. The icons only appear along the active route, so a quick test drive is the only reliable check.
2. Read the Wazeopedia entry for traffic lights, which lists the editor rules and the icons the WME tool uses.
3. If your area is missing lights, find the local Waze community on the Waze Discuss forum and request the lights be added. Editing requires a rank-3 account in the US, and the Wazeopedia explains the rank rules for higher-traffic roads.

Drivers who want to do the mapping themselves can apply to join the Waze Map Editor community. Once they reach the appropriate rank, the WME interface includes a “Traffic light” tool under the Hazards menu. The work flows through the same review process as other permanent map features.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get traffic lights to show up in Waze?

There is no setting to switch on. The feature is rolling out on Waze’s servers, and the version of the app on your phone does not control it. You will see the icons on the route you are navigating once Waze enables them for your account and once enough traffic lights in your area have been added to the map by Waze editors. Updating the app to the latest version is still worth doing, but it is not the trigger.

Why does my friend see traffic lights in Waze and I do not?

Two reasons are most likely. Either Waze has not yet pushed the feature to your account, or your area has fewer mapped traffic lights than the other driver’s. Waze has not published a schedule for the rollout, and the support team is currently telling users that traffic lights will appear over time where editors have mapped them. The feature is rolling out gradually across North America first, with other regions to follow.

Will Waze add traffic lights in my country?

Waze says the rollout is gradually reaching all North American (US and Canada) users and that the rest of the world will see this feature in due course. The company has not given dates by country. Countries with established Waze map-editor communities will likely get the icons sooner, because the underlying data depends on editors adding the lights to the map, not on app updates.

Are stop signs coming to Waze too?

Yes. Waze has confirmed that stop signs are on the roadmap and are likely to be the next major road-sign feature after the traffic-light rollout is complete. There is no launch date. Apple Maps already shows stop signs in some countries, including the United States, so the addition would close one of the few remaining gaps between Waze and its main rival.

Can I add a traffic light to the Waze map myself?

Regular drivers cannot. Traffic lights are treated as a permanent road feature, not a user report. In the United States, map editors of rank 3 or higher can add traffic lights through the Waze Map Editor, and higher-rank roads require higher-rank editors. The Wazeopedia page on traffic lights documents the process. If you do not have editor access, the Waze Discuss forum for your area is the right place to file a request.