Car Mode Audio

About Car Mode Audio Android App

IMPORTANT: After installing this app, please go to Android Settings -> Accessibility to enable the app to read system notifications.

TRADEMARK USE NOTICE: All use of trademarked application icons within this app are, to the best of my knowledge, privileged nominative use in accordance with US trademark law. The use of the icons is necessary for purposes of identifying another producer's product, allowing the user to launch that product. Their use DOES NOT imply any kind of endorsement of this product by the trademark owner.

This is a very simple app that creates a large font display of your currently playing music, suitable for use when your device is in a car dock. The app detects playing music by listening to the notification area for notifications that are generated by music players.

How it works: Modern music players designed to meet Google's design criteria for music players generate a system notification when they are playing music. The app uses the Android Accessibility system to detect and read those notifications. The app also has 4 buttons that will send standard Android system requests (previous, play, pause, or next) to the currently playing app.

This app relies on the music player to be designed and programmed to interact with Android according to Google's guidelines for media app development. As such, compatibility with this app is entirely dependent on the original app's developer. Because of this, and because I do not want this app to have access to any of your personal information beyond what is absolutely necessary for the app to run, this app only has access to notifications from music players that I know to be compatible. Most internet streaming apps do not support the use of a "previous" button, since the app is designed not to allow users to replay previously heard songs. For those apps, the previous button will simply not function.

Compatible:
Pandora
Google Play Music
HTC Music (Sense 4 and Sense 5)
Slacker Radio
Spotify (See note below)
Tune-in Radio
iHeart Radio

Not Compatible:
** none yet, but I'm sure they are out there **

For Spotify specifically, the developer only to displays a notification when the Spotify app is not in the foreground causing some issues with display when the app is first started or is stopped by another music player (see limitations note for more information).

If you have a favorite music player that is not on this list, please let me know by sending an e-mail to my developer e-mail address. Testing and adding music players that meet Google's design criteria is fairly easy and I can add compatibility within a couple of days in most cases.

Limitations: Since Android does not provide direct access to media status or information, this app relies on intercepting notifications and interpreting what is playing on the speakers. Since the app can only catch notifications when they are first sent, and has no access to notifications already in the notification area, this can cause some issues with proper display of song titles in some cases. A few notable cases: If the accessibility service is started after music is already playing, the song title will not be updated until the song changes. If Spotify music is stopped by another player (i.e. the user started playing Pandora), both Spotify and the new app will send a notification to Android. Sometimes the Spotify music title and artist will still be displayed in the app. In most cases, pausing and restarting the music in your player of choice will correct any display issues in this app.

This is currently in early BETA form. The app appears to be reasonably stable on my phone that I use on a regular basis, but it may still have bugs. This app is designed specifically for phones, and the layout does not look that great on tablet devices. I will probably work on a tablet optimized design but that is a very low priority right now.