Android Auto integrates some of your favorite mobile apps with your vehicle’s infotainment system. While it would be great to add geocaching, gas, and road trip planner apps to this list, only a limited set of apps is compatible with the platform.
Still, here are 13 apps for Android Auto that can make your drive time easier and more enjoyable. These are some of the most useful apps available!
Waze users can update the map in real time with traffic jams, hazards, and more.
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The highly popular, Google-owned Waze navigation app provides up-to-the-minute information on traffic jams, crashes, and essential details to help you stay safe and save time on the road.
Waze stands out due to its functionality. It leverages millions of user-reporters who update the map with traffic jams, police officers, crashes, or hazards. These updates appear directly on your vehicle’s display. See What Is Waze and How Does It Work? for more information.
It’s equally easy for you to report such incidents, benefiting fellow users. For example, large buttons on the screen allow you to quickly indicate a road hazard.
Waze functions as a standard navigation app, offering directions home or to work with just a tap. It also features categories for finding parking, gas (with prices at some locations), shopping, coffee, drive-thru restaurants, and pharmacies with ease.
Some businesses display a phone number and on-site services, allowing you to easily check if a nearby location offers amenities like restrooms, parking, or air conditioning.
The settings offer useful options. You can configure the app to avoid toll roads, ferries, and freeways. You can also prevent Waze from guiding you down unpaved roads, or, if you don’t mind, allow only short unpaved routes. Another toggle helps avoid complex intersections, easing navigation in unfamiliar areas.
Other helpful features include a speed display on the map, access to alternative routes, and quick options to mute the sound or enable alerts only.
Even if you’re not planning to use Waze full-time, it’s a valuable app to have. Switching to Waze is beneficial when expecting road closures or traffic jams, as these are often beyond the scope of built-in navigation systems.
Google Maps lets you share your location with friends while you drive.
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What We Like
Easy-to-use, smooth user interface.
Share your location with contacts.
Supports offline maps.
You can’t go wrong with having Google Maps in your car. This app tends to run smoother than Waze, and it offers satellite view and live location sharing, which are handy features that Waze lacks.
Like Waze, Google Maps lets you view traffic, avoid tolls and highways, choose different routes, search for past destinations, and browse categories to quickly find places like hotels and restaurants.
However, you can switch to satellite view if you prefer high-res images of your surroundings instead of traditional map-style roads and colors; this feature can aid navigation in some areas. Additionally, you can share your journey with contacts directly from the car app to keep them updated on your location during a trip.
Stay connected with Facebook friends even while you drive.
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What We Like
Keeps you safe by letting you listen to messages only, not read them.
Just speak to write back.
If you enjoy using Facebook Messenger, you’ll be pleased to know that you can receive notifications about new messages while driving with Android Auto. There’s no need to use your phone, as you can listen to new messages and reply with your voice.
Tap any message received during your trip, and it’ll be read aloud. You can see who sent the message, but for safety, you won’t see any text, images, or other content when accessing the conversation. You will be informed if an image was sent, so you can check it later on your phone.
It’s great to see Facebook Messenger available as an Android Auto app for those who frequently use it on their phones.
Basically limitless audiobooks for long drives.
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LibriVox offers tens of thousands of free audiobooks at your fingertips. Integration with Android Auto is great for listening to lengthy books during drives.
The app’s simplicity provides everything you need at a glance, allowing you to focus on driving.
Over 100,000 global radio stations are just a tap away.
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What We Don’t Like
Cluttered app.
Lots of ads.
TuneIn Radio is a comprehensive app that lets you listen to tens of thousands of radio stations, both local and from over 190 countries. It offers sports, news, music, and podcasts, allowing you to browse music stations by genre. Your saved favorites are easily accessible while driving.
If you prefer not to use Android Auto, TuneIn Radio offers a driving mode specifically designed for ease of use. Mount your phone and press the vehicle button for large quick-access buttons to favorites, voice search, and recommended stations.
Check the weather while you drive.
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What We Don’t Like
Slow, choppy responsiveness.
Can’t pan around the map (just zoom).
While driving, you might frequently check the weather, particularly to avoid storms. This app provides an easy way to view radar on your in-car display.
Most Android Auto weather apps don’t offer radar, but Weather & Radar does, though it’s sometimes slow. You can zoom in and out for different map views, and it displays current temperatures for each city.
Live audio from 8,000+ fire and police scanners, weather stations, and more.
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Scanner Radio is a neat app that streams live audio from thousands of fire and police scanners, weather radio stations, ham radio repeaters, air traffic, and marine radios.
The Android Auto app lets you access favorite scanners, view the top 10 list, and find nearby scanners. You can easily identify scanner locations and listener counts. The player is simple, featuring just pause and play buttons.
Easily navigate to hundreds of thousands of EV charging stations.
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ChargePoint is invaluable if you need to charge your EV away from home. It shows the availability of charging stations on a map. ChargePoint operates the world’s largest network of electric vehicle charging stations.
This Android Auto app allows you to find nearby stations without logging in. If you do have an account, you can quickly access your favorite spots and recently visited chargers.
Filter stations by DC Fast, Available, and Free. After selecting a station, view the price estimate and details like available connectors. Then, navigate there using a compatible app such as Google Maps.
Hands-free access to endless audiobooks.
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What We Like
Stream audiobooks stored in your Google account.
Full cover photos to help you see at a glance which books you have.
Couldn’t be easier to use.
If you’re a Google Play Books user with audiobooks in your Google account, Google’s app is the best way to listen to those titles with Android Auto.
The app might be simple, but it’s quite useful on the road. You can speed up playback up to 3x, skip backward or forward by 30 seconds, and bookmark spots in the book with a single tap.
Take all your music with you on the road.
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If you prefer carrying your music offline, CloudPlayer is a valuable addition to your Android Auto apps. It offers a player for downloaded songs and lets you stream music stored on Dropbox or OneDrive.
CloudPlayer also supports radio, music, and sports stations, which you can browse by location or language. It allows browsing by genre, album, and artist, and organizes your recently added, most played, and top-rated music for easy access while driving.
Stream your YouTube Music library without ever pulling out your phone.
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YouTube Music is well-known, and its Android Auto version resembles the mobile app. It provides access to over 100 million official songs, remixes, and custom playlists.
There are many appealing features: access to new releases, personalized mixes, feel-good favorites, country music, mood music, and top 100 or trending charts. A convenient tab shows what you’ve recently listened to, making it easy to resume your favorite songs while driving.
The player allows scrubbing and includes shuffle, repeat, and like/dislike buttons.
The perfect app for discovering new music.
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What We Like
Great for discovering music from indie artists.
Does a good job mimicking the mobile app.
Skip and scrub through songs.
Our SoundCloud review highlights reasons to enjoy this free music streaming app. Known as “the world’s largest music discovery platform,” it offers a treasure trove of diverse music.
The Android Auto app features tabs at the top, making it easy to access your feed and playlists. Like the mobile app, it offers a personal mix, Daily Drops, and SoundCloud Weekly.
The Library tab houses your liked tracks, playlists, albums, stations, downloads, and listening history. The player enables scrubbing and includes a button to add tracks to your “Liked” list.
Stream millions of songs and podcasts for free.
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Android Auto offers many music apps, but Spotify is a top choice, serving over half a billion users monthly with music and podcasts. You can learn more in our Spotify review.
Why is Spotify useful as an Android Auto app? It’s valuable because recently played items are just a tap away, and there are millions of songs available for streaming.
Browse through podcasts, audiobooks, music genres, and moods. It’s convenient to have all your favorite podcasts and playlists easily accessible while driving. Plus, you can ‘favorite’ items on the screen for later, avoiding the need to reach for your phone to save a track.
Spotify is mostly free, but subscribing to Spotify Premium offers offline playback, no ads, and the ability to play or skip any song.
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