Photo: Google
Voice commands are an integral part of the Android Auto experience, and it’s really not hard to figure out why. Given it’s drivers we’re talking about here, the distraction behind the wheel is a critical factor, so with voice commands, users can interact with Android Auto without looking or touching the screen.
On the other hand, it’s not necessarily a secret that the support for voice commands on Android Auto hasn’t always been the most refined.
And while Google itself has tried to roll out additional polishing for users out there, this feature sometimes just stops working for no clear reason.
This is what happened in October when users noticed that using voice commands with Spotify on Android Auto was pretty much impossible. Asking Google Assistant to play a song or sending any other command related to Spotify no longer worked properly, and several users confirmed the same behavior in their cars in the last few months.
All workarounds that the impacted Android Auto users turned to eventually proved useless. Clearing the cache, reinstalling Spotify, and even resetting the smartphone didn’t produce any improvement, so it was pretty obvious a patch was the only way to go.
Fortunately, a fix is finally available, though this time, it’s not included in an update for Android Auto but in the latest version of Spotify. This means the music app was the culprit for this error, and Google confirms that users need to install the newest Spotify update to receive the fix.
Several users have already confirmed that updating Spotify indeed brings things back to normal, with voice commands once again working properly when used to listen to a specific song.
In the meantime, Google is working on more big things on the Android Auto front, including a major overhaul codenamed Coolwalk. Likely coming in the summer, this update will include support for a card-based UI similar to the CarPlay dashboard, therefore making it possible to run multiple apps side-by-side even on displays without wide-screen support.
And while Google itself has tried to roll out additional polishing for users out there, this feature sometimes just stops working for no clear reason.
This is what happened in October when users noticed that using voice commands with Spotify on Android Auto was pretty much impossible. Asking Google Assistant to play a song or sending any other command related to Spotify no longer worked properly, and several users confirmed the same behavior in their cars in the last few months.
All workarounds that the impacted Android Auto users turned to eventually proved useless. Clearing the cache, reinstalling Spotify, and even resetting the smartphone didn’t produce any improvement, so it was pretty obvious a patch was the only way to go.
Fortunately, a fix is finally available, though this time, it’s not included in an update for Android Auto but in the latest version of Spotify. This means the music app was the culprit for this error, and Google confirms that users need to install the newest Spotify update to receive the fix.
Several users have already confirmed that updating Spotify indeed brings things back to normal, with voice commands once again working properly when used to listen to a specific song.
In the meantime, Google is working on more big things on the Android Auto front, including a major overhaul codenamed Coolwalk. Likely coming in the summer, this update will include support for a card-based UI similar to the CarPlay dashboard, therefore making it possible to run multiple apps side-by-side even on displays without wide-screen support.
Google News