New Android Auto update lays the groundwork for major music push

Android Auto is hugely popular, with millions using their Android phone to power their car’s infotainment system, rather than the system from the manufacturer. There’s been a change coming for some time, with the latest version of the Android Auto app taking us closer than ever to a new set of features.

The new feature we’re interested in is the integration of your car’s radio into the Android Auto interface. Currently, if you want to control music through Android Auto it’s all streamed. That could be a problem if you don’t have a huge data contract or if you’re in an area with bad reception.

Thanks to 9to5Google, we now have some more detail on the latest move to have Android Auto control your car’s hardware. It’s thought that there are two aspects to this – firstly getting access to your car’s radio and secondly being able to access media stored locally, perhaps on a USB stick connected to your car.

In the latest Android Auto 13.3 beta, there are now extensive listings for music genres, most likely to aid in searching for radio stations. These will probably interface with the car’s radio data to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

That’s the good news – over the past few releases of Android Auto, more and more information has been uncovered that points to this “Car Media” interaction. The bad news is that we don’t actually know when or if it’s actually going to happen. There’s always the chance that this will only work with manufacturers who enable this interaction – and that could be limited to new cars only.

You can already use Android Auto and your car radio together

All is not lost though: if you want to use your existing car radio and Android Auto at the same time, you already can. The problem is often that Android Auto will start playing audio from its own sources, perhaps Spotify, when connected.

But if you are connected to Android Auto and you exit back to your car’s system via the icon in the menu, you’ll be able to tune the radio to whatever you want and then return to the Android Auto environment for navigation.

Integrating these two systems will make it all easier, because you should be able to trigger those car media sources without leaving the Android Auto environment. Of course there’s the potential for confusion if you use voice for this task – how is Google Assistant going to know whether you’re asking for streamed radio or FM radio?

It feels like there’s a lot more to learn about Google’s plan to take over your car’s audio.