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Android Auto Blocking the Radio Because Nothing Can Be Easy These Days

In theory, Android Auto should play nice with radio stations, thus allowing you to listen to whatever you want when connecting your Android device to the car.
Android Auto keeps insisting on music players, users say 1 photo
Photo: Google
Do you want to listen to over the air radio and use Google Maps on Android Auto? That’s fine because Android Auto fully supports it. How about using the navigation app and a music player like Spotify or YouTube Music? That’s even better, and you can control everything from the Android Auto interface.

But as some people found out the hard way recently, the experience in this regard is not as straightforward as it may seem at first glance, as listening to a radio station in the car is much harder after updating Android Auto to a recent version.

And it’s all because Android Auto always takes over the radio and tries to start playing music through a media app, according to users struggling with the whole thing in their car.

I have the same problem recently. Google will not allow me to listen to over the air radio for more than a couple of minutes, and then shuts it off (the car radio, whether satellite or terrestrial) and then insists that any audio I hear comes exclusively via the internet, through and controlled by and monitored by the Google Android Auto app,” one user explains.

At this point, this behavior doesn’t appear to be too widespread, so not a lot of users are impacted by the glitch. That’s the good news. The bad news is the generic workarounds that sometimes resolve Android Auto issues are useless now, and what’s more, some can’t even reinstall the app since it’s now baked into the operating system.

Google is yet to acknowledge these struggles with Android Auto, so you’d better not hold your breath for a fix. A new update for the app is supposed to land in January as version 6.0.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
Bogdan Popa profile photo

Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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