While I use Apple Maps day to day, I love Waze for car rides longer than a half hour or so. Thanks to its proactive alerts for speed traps, upcoming traffic, and debris on the road, I find it to be essential for summer traveling. One of Waze’s biggest innovations recently has been its Waze Audio Kit, a developer toolset that allows approved partners to fully integrate their apps with the Waze Audio Player.

While apps like Spotify have been on there for years, we are starting to new new apps get approved and take advantage of it. Pandora was a recent addition. Castbox, a popular podcasting app, is the latest such app to get approved to work right inside of Waze.

I know that I listen to a lot of podcasts while in the car, so Castbox users who also use Waze will get access to control their podcasts without having to change apps.

“The beauty of podcasts is that listeners can engage in other activities while fully immersing themselves in the content they love, which makes it the perfect medium for daily commutes and long drives,” said Renee Wang, founder and CEO of Castbox. “Our integration with Waze lets us keep our listeners continuously engaged in their favorite shows while ensuring a safer, more enjoyable journey.”

Once the apps are connected, Castbox users can access playback controls to pause, skip, or restart episodes without ever leaving the Waze navigation screen. While inside the Castbox app, users can receive turn-by-turn traffic directions while accessing their podcast libraries.

There is a lot of exciting things happening this summer with iPhone and CarPlay as well, so be sure to check out our iOS 13 CarPlay preview.

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