The big advantage of Android Auto over the system that comes standard in our car is that it is compatible with some of the best Android apps. Google Maps on Android Auto, for example, is a must-have app, but it’s not the only one; There is also Waze, Spotify and even YouTube.
Another widely used application on Android Auto is WhatsApp, but not like on mobile or touchscreen because it can cause distractions while driving. And many users take advantage of Android Auto’s voice control to send messages to their WhatsApp contacts without having to pick up their phone.
That’s why the latest Android Auto “bug” is so annoying, and the worst part is that it seems like it’s not the users’ fault, but Google’s. A recent company-imposed change appears to have broken many apps’ compatibility with Android Auto.
WhatsApp on Android Auto not working
Specifically, the problem that drivers suffer from is that WhatsApp does not perform the actions they request when using Android Auto voice control; but in reality, The fault does not lie with the WhatsApp application, but with Google Assistant.
A detail shared by Reddit users and official Google forums is that WhatsApp never receives the order they gave. That is, they may ask you to send a message to a contact, and this command never reaches whatsapp and therefore it is not executed. The real culprit is therefore Google Assistant, which receives the voice command and never transmits it to WhatsApp.
This matches another recent bug in Android Auto, which causes all voice commands to execute in Google Maps, even if we’re using a different mapping app. Therefore, this indicates that Google has changed something in the Assistant that changes the way voice commands are executed; and as a result, many functions that depended on these commands were broken.
The bad news is that, for now, there is no way to fix this; This is because no recent updates are causing this. Everything indicates that these outages are the result of a change in Google’s servers, and in the way they execute the voice commands they receive.
Remember that Google Assistant lost functions at the start of the year, following Google’s change of priority towards Gemini Artificial Intelligence; and Google Assistant also recently underwent changes in Android Auto. It could be that by implementing these changes, Google has touched what it shouldn’t have and that’s why the Assistant is causing so many problems for users.
