Couldn't agree more!

In addition, what annoys me even more is that 80% of the 'My Waze' bar isn't even functional! You need to press the words "My Waze", which is tucked in the left corner. This could have been handled much better by:

1) Having the option to toggle these features on/off.
2) Making the My Waze bar an icon on the side of the screen, or...
3) Combine the two bars together.

I would prefer not to have any bars at all, but I wouldn't mind as much if it were all in one bar.

The latest waze update relocated the transparent search bar to the bottom of the screen above a mywaze bar which on widescreen displays dramatically reduces the vertical height of the map screen; effectively a vast amount of wasted space dedicated to nothing of use during roaming.
Add an option to auto hide both until a touch gesture brings them back for users who wish to dedicate their screens to an actual useful map not opaque, poorly designed controls utterly wasting vast quantities of screen real estate.

Why did this suddenly pop up? I could tolerate the search bar, but adding "my waze" underneath it just wastes screen realestate. Its not like you couldnt have it pop up when you touch the screen? But I totally fail to understand what "my Waze" does?

Agreed. Waze shot itself in the foot with this. I’ll come back to waze after they fix this stupidity of having the search bar always showing.

Same here :(

same

The search bar is blocking most of the map when Waze is not in navigation

Same here.

It is annoying

Please make the search bar hideable when using Waze but not navigating to a destination. The ability to use "Hey Google" makes this bar unnecessary and the bar drastically reduces the visible map, especially when using the device in landscape mode.

Please remove (or have a setting to switch off) the search bar at the bottom of the screen when you don’t have a route planned but still want to use Waze. The box is massive and completely gets in the way. It’s only appeared a few updates back.

Please make the new bottom search bar on navigation screen disappear once you start a trip. Or take it away all together.
It’s blocking too much of the screen.
Sometimes people just want the map without inputting a destination.
Thanks.

Please allow the ability to turn off the search "where to" bar and the my Waze/carpool buttons on the display. It's hard to see the roadway display with that space taken up by buttons I won't use

The new search bar on the Navi screen is a huge nuisance as it blocks a sizable portion of the bottom of the screen and block the Arrow/image of where your car is on the road.
The bar was easy to find before. This change now stops us from just having the map on without having to specify a destination. Many times we don’t want to or have to. You should program it to disappear if it’s not being used as opposed to staying there and blocking your view.
Please strongly consider removing it, or allowing the user to remove it.
Thank you.

Bonjour,
Depuis la nouvelle version, deux barres s’affiche en bas de l’écran, le problème c’est qu’elle rétrécissent trop la carte et c’est très gênant pour moi qui utilise waze toute la journée et tout les jours. Merci de trouver une solution pour en supprimer au moins une.

Wouldn't it be nice to have this bar removed in order to show an expanded map?

I got a shock after a recent update when this annoying search window overlayed the map. It took up like ⅓ of the screen. setting for search over while in map should default to off

As of the latest update, the search bar now comes up on startup and does not go away. It takes up relal estate on the screen is should be either customization or disappear if not used in 20 seconds.