For some time now, Android Auto users have been subject to a pesky bug that sometimes causes autoplay to start up right alongside your car, even when the feature is disabled from within Settings. Now, in a post over on Reddit, the company is confirming that it has squashed the infotainment startup handling bug such that “unsolicited play commands won’t be sent when you have autoplay turned off.”
This is great news for anyone frustrated by the unpredictability of autoplay in its previous state. According to Google, the autoplay fix is rolling out for devices running Android 9 (Pie) and newer, and Android Auto dating back as far as v16.7/v16.8. It’s worth noting that autoplay in this instance refers to Android Auto’s native functionality, and not in-app features like Spotify’s autoplay.
Autoplay will finally respect your preferences
A more predictable experience overall
For the most part, I always keep autoplay enabled when using Android Auto. It’s extremely convenient to have my music, podcasts, and audiobooks start up automatically when I turn on my vehicle, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. That being said, the option to disable autoplay makes sense in some contexts, and having a toggle for the feature matches Android’s traditional ethos of user choice.
The unreliability of the autoplay toggle within Android Auto has been a point of contention for some time now, and so it’s great to see Google finally addressing the issue. The company is improving Android Auto’s autoplay in a couple of other key ways, too. For starters, apps that haven’t been recently or ever used will no longer be selected for autoplay. Additionally, a one-tap notification will let you disable autoplay if the system detects that you pause it frequently on startup.
These are all great changes that help streamline the Android Auto experience on the whole, and I welcome them with open arms. It’s good to see Google paying attention to the small details of using Android as an in-car infotainment system, and I hope to see further refinements hit the platform in the coming months. Despite not being perfect, Android Auto is pretty stellar for road trips and the like, and a more predictable autoplay only fortifies its convenience.
