Google has announced a series of news that will arrive during the summer to several of its products, including Android Auto. Android version for cars receives a good amount of interesting news, some of which we previously learned about in leaks.
Probably the most important change is that you can access messaging applications like WhatsApp from the home screen, facilitating the task of sending and consulting messages. In addition, the night mode can be configured separately for maps and applications, there are usability improvements in multimedia apps and the ban is open for more types of apps.
Easier to send messages on WhatsApp and the like
One of the novelties that are already available to everyone will be quite welcome: messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal and the like they are accessible from the Android Auto home screen.
What opens is not the application itself, but a window where you can check the latest notifications -and therefore read the messages- and, what is more important, send messages easily pressing New. When you do, the Google Assistant asks you to tell who and what message.
Night mode to your liking
We discovered that this novelty was about to arrive a couple of months ago and now Google has made it official: to be able to customize the Android Auto launcher from the phone, changing manually setting dark mode.
This option does not seem to be available to everyone yet, because dark mode cannot be configured on the phone -except in the developer options- and directly from the Android Auto settings the only thing that can be changed is Maps mode, not from the application itself. We will have to wait.
Improvements in multimedia apps
Google also mentions changes in multimedia applications, with changes in navigation and usability for make it easier to navigate the content. We saw some of these changes already in YouTube Music, although it is to be expected that they will apply to all applications of the style.
Specifically, applications such as Spotify or YouTube Music will include tabs for the different categories (Spotify already has Start, Recently heard, To explore Y Your Library), and the vertical scroll bar adds a button to search by letter, as well as a button to go back to the top.
More types of apps available
Finally, Google has opened the ban for more types of applications. A few months ago, developers could start launching applications from navigation, parking and loading, based on the new Jetpack library for Android Auto. Google has now formally announced that the charging, parking and navigation applications are now available for use in Android Auto, although some of them have been available for some time, such as the TomTom AmiGo.
More information | Google