Google is shutting down its Android Auto mobile app in favor of Google Assistant

Just in case some people are confused: There are two different things with the same name -<p>- Android Auto vehicle communication technology that mirrors your phone&#x27;s screen to a vehicle&#x27;s head unit.<p>- Android Auto phone app that displays the same interface on your phone&#x27;s screen like a normal app (e.g. mount your phone up high and use directly, or use some other screen mirroring technology to send it to the head unit).<p>Only the SECOND is being discontinued, not the first. This is <i>still</i> bad news for people who rely on it, but has no impact on Android Auto communications system.

That&#x27;s... well. Sometimes, timing is bad. I own a 2010 Mazda 6, which comes with bluetooth, but has no display whatsoever. I installed a custom head unit with Apple Car Play. Unfortunately, this head unit became unresponsive every once in a while, and only restarting the car would help. That annoyed the hell out of me.<p>So I went back to the stock experience (it&#x27;s BOSE after all), and tried to playback audio over bluetooth. For whatever reasons, bluetooth will start skipping parts of the track, or will playback with a faster speed after a while. Maybe, 2010-ish bluetooth is not that great.<p>So I went back to using the aux input. That works, but of course, you cannot use the controls on the wheel.<p>Unfortunately, Apple doesn&#x27;t allow CarPlay to run on your device, so I bought a cheap Android phone three weeks ago, a phone holder for the dashboard, and installed everything into the car. After rooting the device, Tasker would start Android Auto when the car got powered on. To prevent my car from burning down, the phone gets removed from the dash and stored in the glove box after I finished my ride (so that the battery wouldn&#x27;t sit in direct sunlight).<p>After reading the announcement, I switched to &quot;Auto Mate&quot;. Looks decent, but it&#x27;s not quite the same.<p>Maybe I need a new car after all...

Figured this was coming once I saw they were duplicating features from Android Auto in Google Maps.<p>Only thing I really hate about this change is that Maps&#x27; driving mode doesn&#x27;t currently let you do <i>anything</i> until you enter a destination. So until I tell Maps where I&#x27;m going I can&#x27;t even play music over Bluetooth.<p>Android Auto also starts automatically when I turn on my car, whereas Google Maps doesn&#x27;t, but I suppose I could fix that pretty easily with a Tasker task.

This is a very bad news for motorcyclists. I am using Android Auto on by Pixel mounted on my bike handlebars. The reason is that it has bigger buttons and easier to operate wearing gloves.

Is Google&#x27;s rate of shutting down products really high or is this some cognitive bias (more headlines, more prominent products, higher number of products in the first place etc.)?

I drive a ten year old car with no built in Android auto interface. Having Android auto in my phone has been a big deal for me.<p>This sucks.

This is the third time in the past few months that avoiding updates to Google apps on my Android phone has saved or would save me grief (with the first two times being an update to the dialer that would have broke my voicemail, and an update to another product that would have required that I agree to hand over more of my data), and with every incident, I just feel more vindicated.

My expirence with Android Auto in my Skoda Fabia 2019 is patchy already. The connection stopped working in the past year for a few months, now it only connects to my in car screen partly, and spotify wont load.<p>I love the idea of keeping in-car entertainment on my mobile, so I can get updates. In practice, my car will get left behind eventually and I&#x27;ll be stuck with a dumb screen in my dashboard.

At some point Google is going to add a Google Assistant Apps Store and a Google Assistant Dialer, and before we know it they&#x27;ll release a phone with Google Assistant OS and we&#x27;ll be back to square one.<p>Seriously, this thing is getting incredibly bloated, even by Google&#x27;s standards. It&#x27;s a dumping ground for every half-baked duplicative idea Google has had for the past few years, it never gets cleaned up, and its settings screen[1] speaks for itself. It must be hell to work on the thing.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;google-assistant-settings-android&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;21&#x2F;google-assistant-settings-...</a>

Omg thanks a lot for doing this. The first Androis Auto version was great, now they increased number of clicks and taps to get to basic features and it was ready to be hated.

But I need that app in order to access the light&#x2F;dark mode toggle in the developer settings.<p>Google seems to love killing products&#x2F;services.