Android Auto has been starting music on its own at car startup, even for people who turned autoplay off. The audio usually stops again after a few seconds. That is long enough to be startling and short enough to be impossible to ignore. Google has now confirmed that a fix is rolling out, and it comes in three parts.
Google posted the confirmation in a Reddit thread rather than on a blog. As quoted by 9to5Google, the company said this:
We’ve made a couple of bug fixes so autoplay works more predictably and accurately based on your listening preferences.
What the Android Auto fix changes
- Smarter app selection. Apps you have not used recently, or have never used at all, will no longer launch automatically when the car starts.
- A one-tap opt-out prompt. If the system notices you repeatedly pausing whatever it started, it surfaces a notification that switches autoplay off on the spot.
- An infotainment startup fix. The system will stop firing unsolicited playback commands at startup when autoplay is already disabled in your settings.
The third item addresses the actual complaint. The first narrows which apps autoplay is allowed to pick, and the second gives you a faster way out of it. The bug people were reporting was the setting being ignored outright, and that is what Google says is now being fixed.
When it reaches your car
Google did not name the Android Auto version carrying the change, per 9to5Google, and only said it is rolling out. Keeping the Android Auto app updated from the Play Store is the sensible step in the meantime.
Google has been acknowledging other Android Auto complaints in public lately as well. It also said a fix was coming for the missing signal icon users had reported. Neither problem is a major failure alone. Both sit in the category of small things that grate on every single drive.
Source: 9to5Google
