Tesla Lets You Watch Movies After Software Update 2020.12.5, Please Don’t Do It

This new tool lets Tesla owners watch recordings created by the on-board cameras right on the dashboard display, so they no longer have to turn to a computer to do the whole thing.

And while this is without a doubt good news, the Dashcam Viewer can easily be a double-edged sword, as someone has discovered that you can easily trick it to actually watch your very own videos and not just camera footage.

In other words, this little hack lets you watch movies on the Tesla display, something that you shouldn’t by any means do while driving. If anything, you can do this while in park mode, as otherwise watching a movie while driving can end up becoming a fatal distraction for any driver out there.

Watching your own custom videos on the Tesla screen comes down to editing the recording on the USB drive – so yes, you once again need to turn to a desktop computer for the job. Technically, what you have to do is delete one of the recordings and rename your custom videos or movies to seem like a genuine recording (using the deleted file’s name).

Only MP4 files are supported, as this is the format that Tesla works with for camera recordings.

When plugging in the USB drive back to the car, the video should be detected as a camera video, so you can start playing it on the screen.

The thing that will hopefully make you not watch videos while driving is the lack of audio, as currently, these files come without any sound.

On the other hand, the loading and rendering performance seems to be decent, albeit it remains to be seen how the system handles larger files that exceed the size of a typical recording.