All About Apple CarPlay & Android Auto

[Nairrk]

Android Auto 13.8 update now rolling out

After debuting in beta earlier this month, Google is now rolling out the Android Auto 13.8 update to users, but don’t expect many changes.

Android Auto updates arrive more or less on a monthly basis, with the latest v13.8 update appearing to be an overall minor patch. Google doesn’t provide an official changelog, but this update likely delivers various bug fixes behind the scenes among other tweaks.

In our brief testing, we’ve not noticed any direct user-facing changes with this latest update. This update also doesn’t address a “reboot” issue that made headlines last week despite affecting a very small number of users.

In the code of Android Auto 13.8, we noticed further work on “new parked apps.” Google first started adding this language to the app in the v13.7 update that rolled out early this month.

We believe this to be related to Google’s efforts to bring more apps to Android Automotive and Android Auto, a program which bore its first fruits last week as Google announced support for “dozens” of new streaming and gaming apps for cares with Android Automotive. Google says on a developer page that this program will extend to Android Auto “at a later date.”

New strings in Android Auto 13.8 continue to build on this, with further additions for apps that work while the vehicle is parked.

• <string name=”open_new_app”>Tap to open</string>
• <string name=”open_new_parked_app”>Open while parked</string>

These changes are not yet user-facing, though.

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[Nairrk]

Android Auto’s reboot issue was seemingly caused by obscure developer settings

If you recently heard about strange reboot issues with Android Auto but didn’t run into those problems yourself, it seems the reason is that these issues were seemingly caused by developer settings.

Alarms were sounded last week regarding a potential new Android Auto bug that was causing smartphones to reboot at random while using Android Auto. That traces back to a Reddit thread where five separate users were reporting the same behavior. Android Auto would start up on their car’s display, but would cause a “soft” reboot on their phone when they interacted with certain parts of the experience.

“Soft” reboot in this context means that the Android Auto session ends and the device goes into a locked state, rather than going through a full reboot.

We couldn’t find additional reports of this behavior on Google’s support forums or other typical channels where Android Auto problems surface.

That appears to be due to how this reboot “issue” arose, as it was apparently tied to some fairly obscure Android developer settings.

In a Reddit comment, one user found on February 21st that disabling the developer settings for “Force Desktop Mode” fixed the problem. It was claimed that the Android Auto 13.8 update, rolling out now, fixed the problem, but it appears that the version installed makes no difference in this case. The problem did first appear with Android Auto 13.4, though, and downgrading to version 13.3 fixed the problem for some. So, at some point, it stands to reason that a later Android Auto update will fully solve this problem, even if the fairly obscure developer setting seems to be the root cause.

Meanwhile, there were more widespread problems with wireless Android Auto recently, as users were running into problems with the latest updates that caused wireless connectivity to break. It’s unclear if the latest release, Android Auto 13.8, solves these problems.

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[Nairrk]

Android Auto 14.0 releases in beta with prep for defrost buttons, Maps alert controls

Google has released the first Android Auto 14.0 update through its beta program and while there are no major user-facing changes, code behind the scenes continues work on temperature controls.

As we first reported earlier this month, Google added strings in Android Auto 13.9 (which is now rolling out widely to all users) which suggested some form of temperature controls as a native feature of Android Auto. The context in which those controls would be added is not yet clear, but Android Auto 14.0 continues work on this.

Strings added in Android Auto 14.0 include front and rear defrost toggles, which are not live in the actual app yet.

• <string name=”control_defrost_front”>FRONT</string>
• <string name=”control_defrost_rear”>REAR</string>

This latest update also suggests Google is working on an option to control alerts from Maps in Android Auto, specifically referring to incident reports. This appears to be preparing a new “Alerts” section in the settings menu which would possibly have a toggle for incident reports.

• <string name=”ALERT_SETTINGS_CATEGORY_TITLE”>Alerts</string>
• <string name=”NAVIGATION_ALERT_SETTING”>Get alerts for reported incidents and other conditions that may impact your drive</string>

Google faced some criticism following the rollout of incident reports on Android Auto and CarPlay due to their somewhat intrusive design, so this toggle could be aiming to solve that. Without the feature live, though, it’s hard to say for certain.

Android Auto 14.0 will likely be released to the stable track, and in turn all users, in the next couple of weeks, though an exact timeline is hard to pin down. Since there’s nothing directly user-facing in the update, though, it’s likely that Google is using this to patch other ongoing bugs or prepare to launch other new features.

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