Waze Android Auto Cancel Route Bug, Three Months No Fix

A bug in Waze on Android Auto has broken the cancel route button for more than three months, forcing drivers to pick up their phones to end a trip. Tapping the X no longer cancels navigation, and the problem persists across Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones paired with Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Kia, BMW, and other vehicles.

Google’s Android Auto team has acknowledged the bug, but a fix has not arrived. A user on Waze’s own community forum reported on June 19 that the button works again, yet others continued posting about the same broken X on Google’s Android Auto support thread as recently as this week, leaving the resolution uncertain.

What the Bug Does to the Cancel Button

On Android Auto, drivers running a Waze route see an X in the route information area at the bottom of the screen, next to the estimated arrival time and remaining distance. Pressing that X used to end navigation cleanly. The bug breaks that action: the X slightly changes color, confirming the tap registered, but the route keeps running and Waze keeps calling out turns for the trip the driver wanted to abandon.

The first formal complaint on Google’s Android Auto support forum arrived on March 18, 2026. The poster described the broken button in detail: “The X button slightly changes color showing that it saw the press but the navigation does not stop. You have to open waze on your phone and select stop on the directions screen.” Every reply since has described the same behavior.

The behavior also breaks a small expectation drivers form with any navigation app: that an on-screen button does what its icon suggests. The workarounds drivers fall back on are slower or more dangerous than the original tap, which makes the bug’s three-month shelf life particularly hard to absorb on a daily commute.

Three Months of Driver Reports

The earliest reports came in mid-March, when users started filing complaints on Google’s Android Auto support forum and on Waze’s own community site. A Waze community thread opened on March 29 by user MDSDoug described the X as unresponsive “as of this week” in a 2022 Kia Telluride that had worked for years. Within days, a BMW driver had chimed in on the same thread.

The phone list is just as wide. Galaxy owners from the S23 through the S26 Ultra and Edge models reported the bug. Google Pixel 6, 8 Pro, 10 Pro, and 10 Pro XL users did too. Wired and wireless Android Auto connections both fail in the same way.

By April, the volume of replies had grown enough that the Android Auto team moved past the standard request for device logs. A response on April 13 read, “We’ve forwarded your issue to the rest of the team,” and the thread has stayed open since. Users kept posting about the same broken X within hours of each other through late June.

The reports span users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other EU countries, with no geographic or carrier pattern emerging. The Google support thread’s English-language moderation has not limited replies to one country or one network.

The combinations below reflect the most-cited reports across the two forum threads since the bug emerged.

What Google’s Team Has Said

The Android Auto team’s first response on March 20 was a routine request for device logs, including phone make, head unit, OS version, mobile build number, Android Auto version, wired or wireless, frequency, and a Google Play services version. That template email is the standard first reply on the support forum, and it left the actual cause of the bug unclear.

A second reply on March 29 told the original poster the team would reach out by email for more information, and a third reply on April 13 escalated one notch further, saying the report had been forwarded “to the rest of the team.” None of the three replies named which team, or what the next step would be after the forwarded ticket landed.

Neither thread has a public explanation of what is causing the broken X. An autoevolution report quoted a Google Community Specialist as saying the issue had been forwarded to the Android Auto team and that it remained “unclear who is at fault for the broken button.”

The Workarounds Drivers Have Found

With no patch in sight, drivers have built a small catalog of workarounds, none of them ideal. The most common moves listed across the forum threads:

• Tap the X repeatedly until it eventually registers, then accept the risk of accidentally selecting a stray destination.
• Clear the cache and data for Android Auto and Waze before each drive (a temporary fix that the bug returns to defeat).
• Use a Gemini voice command to cancel the route (only available to drivers who have already received the Gemini rollout on Android Auto).
• Pull over and end the navigation from the Waze app on the phone directly.

The repeated-tap method carries its own safety risk, since a Galaxy S24 Ultra owner on the support thread flagged the danger of mashing the X until something else on the screen gets selected instead. The Gemini workaround is incomplete: the rollout started in late 2025 and is still underway, according to autoevolution, so not every car has the voice assistant yet. The cache-clear trick buys a single clean drive before the bug returns, and one Waze forum user said in late May that they had moved to Google Maps full time because the Waze bug made the app unusable on Android Auto for their daily commute. That is a quiet defection Google can measure on its analytics dashboards, even if it has not surfaced in any official statement.

Why the Fix Is Dragging On

Waze and Android Auto both belong to Google, which makes the three-month delay harder to explain to drivers living with the bug. A user on the support thread summed up the frustration on June 6 with a request that the parent company step in.

Waze and Android belong to the same company. Can someone in authority in the parent company please tell the two entities to work together and get things fixed?

The most plausible reason is structural. Waze runs as a separate product team inside Google from Android Auto, and the canceled-route bug sits at the seam between the two. Whether the fault lies in a Waze update, an Android Auto update, or the way the two apps talk to each other has not been confirmed publicly. The bug also lands inside the Gemini transition: Google’s plan to replace Assistant on Android Auto with Gemini started in late 2025 and is still rolling out, which means the two AI systems overlap for many drivers, and Gemini’s voice command is a working workaround only for users who have already received the new assistant.

Adding to the silence, no public Waze changelog entry since March has mentioned the cancel route button, and the Waze app’s community manager has not posted on the original forum thread since MDSDoug opened it in March. That absence is unusual: Waze community threads typically receive at least a holding reply within days of a confirmed bug.

Where Things Stand on June 25

The clearest signal of progress arrived on June 19, when MDSDoug posted on the Waze forum that the X button was “working for me again as expected now.” The post carried weight because MDSDoug was the original reporter in March and had been documenting the bug across multiple vehicles ever since.

This has been resolved. Working for me again as expected now.

A day before MDSDoug’s post, a driver with a Samsung S25 Edge and S25 paired with a 2021 Honda EXL had posted on Google’s support thread that the X was still broken. Posts from Samsung S26 Ultra owners in a Toyota Yaris and from Pixel 10 Pro owners in a Toyota Corolla landed within days. As of June 25, no public patch notes for Waze or Android Auto reference the cancel route button, and Google’s support thread has stayed open with the same unanswered question at the top.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Waze Android Auto cancel button bug start?

The first report on Google’s Android Auto support forum landed on March 18, 2026, and the Waze community thread opened on March 29. Users described the bug as something that had begun within the prior week or two on vehicles that had worked for years.

Which phones and cars are affected?

Samsung Galaxy S23, S24, S24 Ultra, S25, S25 Edge, and S26 Ultra users have reported it, along with Pixel 6, 8 Pro, 10 Pro, and 10 Pro XL owners. Vehicles named in the reports include the Toyota Corolla, Tundra, Yaris, and Prius, the Lexus NX 350h and RX 350h, the Honda Civic, the Kia Telluride, a Chevy, a Ford, a BMW, a Porsche Macan, and the Cupra Born and Formentor.

Has Google fixed the Waze Android Auto bug?

Not publicly. The Android Auto team has confirmed the report and forwarded it internally, but no patch has been announced. One user on the Waze forum said the button worked again on June 19, while other users continued posting about the same broken X on Google’s support thread in the days that followed.

How can I cancel a route in Waze on Android Auto until the bug is fixed?

The options drivers have used are repeated taps on the X button, clearing the Android Auto and Waze app cache before driving, asking Gemini to cancel the route (where available), and pulling over to cancel from the Waze app on the phone.

Why can’t Waze and Android Auto just fix it themselves?

Both products sit inside Google, but they run as separate teams with separate codebases. The cancel route bug appears at the intersection of the two apps, and Google has not publicly identified which side is at fault. The autoevolution report quoted a Google Community Specialist as saying it remained unclear who was responsible.