Photo: reddit user Human_Standard_5663
Android Auto is going through big changes these days, as the highly anticipated Coolwalk is making solid progress and is slowly but surely moving toward general availability.
Currently available in beta, Coolwalk is a massive redesign of the Android Auto experience, as it allows users to run multiple apps side-by-side on the same screen, regardless of the display size.
In some ways, Coolwalk is very similar to the CarPlay dashboard, as it splits the available screen estate into multiple cards. Each card is dedicated to a specific app, once again in a very similar approach – the largest one, for example, is being used by the navigation solution that the user can always keep on the screen.
Just like on CarPlay, each app must be updated to support the card-based interface, and this is precisely the purpose of the beta program in the first place – to allow users to try out Coolwalk and help Google polish the overall experience, but at the same time, to also provide developers with the necessary resources to get their apps ready for the redesign.
Surprisingly, Google is actually the one that needs more time to do this, as one of its navigation apps still isn’t compatible with Coolwalk.
Waze, also owned by Google, doesn’t even support the split-screen mode that has been around for quite some time on wide-resolution displays, so it’s not necessarily a surprise that it doesn’t run in the navigation card on Coolwalk either.
At this point, the only way Waze can be used on Android Auto with Coolwalk enabled is in the full-screen mode, which kind of kills off the highly anticipated redesign in the first place. Google Maps, on the other hand, fully supports Coolwalk.
The good news is that Waze is already working on the Coolwalk support, and while this isn’t necessarily a surprise, it looks like the rollout of this big feature is just around the corner. The company has started showing a notification on Android Auto, revealing that “dashboard support is coming soon.”
While it’s odd to see Waze referring to Coolwalk as “dashboard,” which is primarily the term used to describe the CarPlay card-based UI, it’s now just a matter of days until the Google-owned application would finally feel at home on the redesigned Android Auto.
Needless to say, neither Google nor Waze provided an ETA as to when this Waze update could go live, but there’s a good chance this happens in early 2023.
Coolwalk doesn’t have an ETA either, but Google promised to begin the rollout to production devices at some point next year. Without a doubt, the search giant has no reason to hurry up on this front, especially as some big apps, including Waze, aren’t prepared for the redesign, and nobody wants a half-baked experience on Android Auto.
In some ways, Coolwalk is very similar to the CarPlay dashboard, as it splits the available screen estate into multiple cards. Each card is dedicated to a specific app, once again in a very similar approach – the largest one, for example, is being used by the navigation solution that the user can always keep on the screen.
Just like on CarPlay, each app must be updated to support the card-based interface, and this is precisely the purpose of the beta program in the first place – to allow users to try out Coolwalk and help Google polish the overall experience, but at the same time, to also provide developers with the necessary resources to get their apps ready for the redesign.
Surprisingly, Google is actually the one that needs more time to do this, as one of its navigation apps still isn’t compatible with Coolwalk.
Waze, also owned by Google, doesn’t even support the split-screen mode that has been around for quite some time on wide-resolution displays, so it’s not necessarily a surprise that it doesn’t run in the navigation card on Coolwalk either.
At this point, the only way Waze can be used on Android Auto with Coolwalk enabled is in the full-screen mode, which kind of kills off the highly anticipated redesign in the first place. Google Maps, on the other hand, fully supports Coolwalk.
The good news is that Waze is already working on the Coolwalk support, and while this isn’t necessarily a surprise, it looks like the rollout of this big feature is just around the corner. The company has started showing a notification on Android Auto, revealing that “dashboard support is coming soon.”
While it’s odd to see Waze referring to Coolwalk as “dashboard,” which is primarily the term used to describe the CarPlay card-based UI, it’s now just a matter of days until the Google-owned application would finally feel at home on the redesigned Android Auto.
Needless to say, neither Google nor Waze provided an ETA as to when this Waze update could go live, but there’s a good chance this happens in early 2023.
Coolwalk doesn’t have an ETA either, but Google promised to begin the rollout to production devices at some point next year. Without a doubt, the search giant has no reason to hurry up on this front, especially as some big apps, including Waze, aren’t prepared for the redesign, and nobody wants a half-baked experience on Android Auto.
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