At the beginning of April, Google announced and released Google Meet for CarPlay, making it easier and safer for users to join meetings and calls while behind the wheel. Now, that same experience is rolling out to Android Auto — albeit with a baffling limitation: it doesn’t support work accounts.

The start of Google Meet’s Android Auto rollout was first spotted by the folks at Android Authority, when one of their team members received a pop-up in the app that read, “Meet is now available on Android Auto,” which linked to a support document with detailed information on how it works.

The Android Auto version of Google Meet works pretty much the same as the CarPlay version. You can view all your scheduled meetings right from your car’s dashboard, and when you select one, you can jump in by tapping join.

Once you join a call, it skips the usual pre-call screen and drops you straight into the meeting with your video turned off. Google says your microphone may or may not be automatically muted as well, depending on how large the meeting is.

For safety reasons, your in-meeting controls are very limited — you can mute your microphone or leave the call, and that’s about it. Other features, like chat or polls, aren’t available unless you safely park and switch to your phone.

Developer

Google

Subscription cost

No

Android Auto is a platform that works with Android smartphones. It integrates into your car’s infotainment system to display compatible software applications on your screen.

The baffling limitation

No work account support seems to defeat the purpose

While the Android Auto version of Google Meet sounds exactly like what you’d expect — especially given the necessary safety restrictions — there’s one glaring limitation that has nothing to do with safety, which I mentioned earlier: it doesn’t support work accounts. Baffling, right?

Here’s what Google has to say about it:

“Work profile accounts aren’t supported in Meet on Android Auto. Active calls will still appear on your display but upcoming meetings and call history will not show.”

So, if you join a meeting on your phone using your work Google account, you can still view it on your car’s dashboard, but you can’t view or join any work meetings through Android Auto.

I know a handful of people who use personal Google accounts for meetings, so in that sense, it’s still useful. But the vast majority rely on Google Meet through their work accounts because they have to. For personal calls, they’re far more likely to use apps like WhatsApp or Discord. That’s why the lack of work account support on Android Auto feels like a major oversight to me, and it’s unclear whether Google plans to address it.

Additionally, what makes it even stranger is that, on the CarPlay side, Google says Meet is “available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.” So again, it’s baffling that the Android Auto version doesn’t offer the same support.

All in all, if you’re constantly on the go and juggling meetings, having Google Meet on both CarPlay and Android Auto is no doubt useful. But limiting the Android Auto version of Meet to personal accounts only is a real head-scratcher and, in my view, kind of undermines its whole point.