Watch out, Waze fans — there's a bug that means reports of police aren't showing up for many

Police reports are missing in Waze for some users
The report submission process still seems to be working
As yet there's been no official acknowledgement

One of the useful features that Waze offers to drivers is indications of a police presence or a speed camera on the road — as supplied by the Waze community, like much of the app's data — but you may not want to rely on its accuracy at the moment.

As reported by Android Police, plenty of Waze users are finding that police alerts aren't showing up on the map for them, or arriving too late. Everything seems fine from the submission side, but the warnings aren't being passed on.

Based on some of the Reddit threads that have popped up around the problem, this is affecting some, but not all, Waze users. It doesn't seem to be related to how long users have spent using the navigation app either.

"On my morning commute I marked several police vehicles and mobile police cameras," says one Redditor. "I got the usual (points and thanks for helping other Wazers), however, what I'd just marked would either show up, then disappear or not show up at all."

Keep trying

Other users say they've seen a delay in police reports showing up for a few weeks now, and there are some comments suggesting there's a problem with hazards of all types showing up on the map — not just police reports.

"I just marked a speed trap and nothing showed up for me either," adds another Redditor. "That's so annoying." It's clearly not something that users are imagining, but at the same time other Waze drivers are saying their alerts are working fine.

We haven't heard anything official from Waze as of yet, and will update this article if we do, but for the time being it seems there's not much you can do about the bug except keep your app updated and wait for a fix to roll out.

Given how prominent community contributions are in Waze, it's frustrating that they seem to be at least partly down for a certain group of users — though this isn't an app we tend to hear much about when it comes to bugs.

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.