Photo: autoevolution
It goes without saying that controlling the music playback in Android Auto using the steering wheel buttons is the recommended way to do it, as looking at the head unit and touching the screen is a big no-no.
However, using the steering wheel buttons in Android Auto doesn’t always come down to the expected experience, as some users have recently discovered that pressing them has a different outcome that they are supposed to have in the first place.
More specifically, when clicking the next song button with Android Auto running on the screen, regardless of the music player that is being used, the app just registers one press as two presses, so instead of skipping to the next song, it skips two songs.
The same for the back button, which instead of going back to the beginning of the current song, it registers two presses and it actually starts playing the previous track.
While there are several posts on the WWW complaining of this issue, it looks like the whole thing just comes down to a head unit firmware update and not to Android Auto.
So if you wanted to downgrade Android Auto to a previous version because you think the latest update is the one causing the whole thing, this would almost certainly make no difference for the steering wheel buttons.
The problem is only experienced on Pioneer head units, and I’m seeing it happening especially on the DMH-W4660NEX with firmware update version 1.13. Pioneer is believed to be looking into the whole thing for now, but an ETA as to when a fix could go live isn’t yet available.
And now, the workaround. The steering wheel controls seem to be broken only when the Pioneer head unit is connected to the Android phone wirelessly. So the solution is to switch from wireless Android Auto to wired Android Auto, as using a USB cable seems to bring things back to normal.
We’ve also reached out to Pioneer for more information and will update the article when an answer is offered.
More specifically, when clicking the next song button with Android Auto running on the screen, regardless of the music player that is being used, the app just registers one press as two presses, so instead of skipping to the next song, it skips two songs.
The same for the back button, which instead of going back to the beginning of the current song, it registers two presses and it actually starts playing the previous track.
While there are several posts on the WWW complaining of this issue, it looks like the whole thing just comes down to a head unit firmware update and not to Android Auto.
So if you wanted to downgrade Android Auto to a previous version because you think the latest update is the one causing the whole thing, this would almost certainly make no difference for the steering wheel buttons.
The problem is only experienced on Pioneer head units, and I’m seeing it happening especially on the DMH-W4660NEX with firmware update version 1.13. Pioneer is believed to be looking into the whole thing for now, but an ETA as to when a fix could go live isn’t yet available.
And now, the workaround. The steering wheel controls seem to be broken only when the Pioneer head unit is connected to the Android phone wirelessly. So the solution is to switch from wireless Android Auto to wired Android Auto, as using a USB cable seems to bring things back to normal.
We’ve also reached out to Pioneer for more information and will update the article when an answer is offered.
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