Android Auto: Can location of track info be customized?

[splinke]

Of all of the Android Auto-compatible audio player apps that I have tested, VLC seems to be the only one that displays track information beyond the Artist and track Title. In the line under the Title, it displays the Track Number (of the tracks that are in the current playlist), followed by a forward slash, followed by the total number of tracks, followed by a bullet point, followed by the Artist, followed by a hyphen, followed by the Album name.

This is great, except all of that information gets too long to display, such that the Album rarely gets shown, and even the Artist often gets cut off. VLC seems to be doing something special to add these additional pieces of information, so is there a way to customize whether something gets displayed and/or where it gets displayed?

For example, if there was enough room on the display, this is how a track might appear with the default VLC setting:

Under My Thumb
2482/2775 • The Rolling Stones - Aftermath

However, it actually appears like this:

Under My Thumb
2482/2775 • The Rolling Stone...

And it would be nice to be able to customize to designate the Track Numbers information to come after the Title (or perhaps leave it off):

Under My Thumb • 2482/2775
The Rolling Stones - Aftermath

[rstone]

Yes, VLC is the only media player which adds this information. I use the queue position to keep my eyes on the road, rather than trying to figure out the difference between the current track and the requested track based solely on names and my memory. If I see I'm at track 10 and someone in the back seat wants to listen to track 20, I just hit my steering wheel thumb switch 10 times. I was missing that information under Android Auto, and my passengers had grown accustomed to using it under the Toyota Entune UI. That system also has a thumb wheel, so I could use the steering wheel switch for a couple of presses or spin the wheel to quickly navigate through the 100's of tracks on the USB stick.

However, you are correct, there is no customization at present. If you could customize it, what would the options be?

1. No position information
2. Position information prior to artist - album
3. Position information prior to title with bullet separator (automatic wrap)
4. Position information prior to title with newline (forced control character)
5. Position information after title with bullet separator (automatic wrap) and forced abbreviation of the title at 40 characters - length(position info)

Option #4 is probably the clearest to the driver (since the title can wrap into two lines, whereas the subtitle only gets one), but the control character is unpredictable across native head unit software. I ended up removing half-spaces (Google uses half spaces in between the elapsed / total time) because Chevy's software displays squares instead (it also doesn't understand RTL/LTR control characters, but that's another story). That sort of brings us back to option #3, since it will probably have the fewest side effects. One of your suggestions is after the title, but I can't guarantee it ends up on the screen. I can do a little bit of math and force abbreviation of the title, but it's iffy because I can't compute the width of the characters to account for the difference between an 'l' and 'M'. The queue info will also move around based on the length of the title, so the driver will not have a consistent place to scan for the information.

We just added Android Auto specific settings on the car screen and this might be good candidate for a future update. (The settings button will only work in a beta or final release delievered through the play store. You can't test it using a nightly.). One problem with customization is that it's often a dumping ground for bad ideas that need to be discarded during UI design, so while I see the value in flexibility, giving people a bunch of bad options isn't really helpful either.

[mindlessbuddha]

I also have this problem in my 2024 Mazda Hatchback infotainment system.

I use VLC as my media player in Android Auto from my Samsung Galaxy s20 Android phone. On the cars display screen, when I randomize all the tracks, the VLC app shows the track number location in my whole library in front of the track title when its playing, so you can't see the track title. It's always done this. On a randomized list, they dont help at all. But there is no way to remove them? They are useless and dont show in the mobile app or on the android widget or even on my VLC desktop version when I randomize my library - only on my Android Auto car screen.

I have over 16000 songs on my phone, so the number is really long, like 14,234/16,500 songs. So the song title ends up like "14,234/16,500 [song title name]" and only the first few letters or maybe a word show on the screen.

[rstone]

Could you take a picture of the Mazda UI and share a link? You can use any online site such as pasteboard.co, etc.

[splinke]

Yes, VLC is the only media player which adds this information. I use the queue position to keep my eyes on the road, rather than trying to figure out the difference between the current track and the requested track based solely on names and my memory. If I see I'm at track 10 and someone in the back seat wants to listen to track 20, I just hit my steering wheel thumb switch 10 times. I was missing that information under Android Auto, and my passengers had grown accustomed to using it under the Toyota Entune UI. That system also has a thumb wheel, so I could use the steering wheel switch for a couple of presses or spin the wheel to quickly navigate through the 100's of tracks on the USB stick.

However, you are correct, there is no customization at present. If you could customize it, what would the options be?

1. No position information
2. Position information prior to artist - album
3. Position information prior to title with bullet separator (automatic wrap)
4. Position information prior to title with newline (forced control character)
5. Position information after title with bullet separator (automatic wrap) and forced abbreviation of the title at 40 characters - length(position info)

Option #4 is probably the clearest to the driver (since the title can wrap into two lines, whereas the subtitle only gets one), but the control character is unpredictable across native head unit software. I ended up removing half-spaces (Google uses half spaces in between the elapsed / total time) because Chevy's software displays squares instead (it also doesn't understand RTL/LTR control characters, but that's another story). That sort of brings us back to option #3, since it will probably have the fewest side effects. One of your suggestions is after the title, but I can't guarantee it ends up on the screen. I can do a little bit of math and force abbreviation of the title, but it's iffy because I can't compute the width of the characters to account for the difference between an 'l' and 'M'. The queue info will also move around based on the length of the title, so the driver will not have a consistent place to scan for the information.

We just added Android Auto specific settings on the car screen and this might be good candidate for a future update. (The settings button will only work in a beta or final release delievered through the play store. You can't test it using a nightly.). One problem with customization is that it's often a dumping ground for bad ideas that need to be discarded during UI design, so while I see the value in flexibility, giving people a bunch of bad options isn't really helpful either.

This is an old thread, but I thought I would receive a notification when there were responses, but I guess I did not activate that, so I am just now seeing the responses. Thank you for your responses, and I will now turn on notifications.

I think similar to "mindlessbuddha," I almost always just do shuffle/random play of my entire library, so the position information is not particularly useful. And, as I described in my original post, that information can consume quite a bit of the space on the Android Auto display--particularly if there are thousands or tens of thousands of tracks in the library.

I would prefer a setting that produces:

Title
Position Information
Artist - Album

That said, I don't think I have ever seen two separate lines of information for the Title (2018 Hyundai Sonata), and I don't know how the subtitles or special characters work. So, for vehicles that cannot handle these to produce the above, then I guess Option #3 would be the safest:

Position Information • Title
Artist - Album

On a related topic, I have also noted that, when I am in shuffle mode for the entire library, the queue list does not show the shuffled tracks. It just shows the track in alphabetical order of the rest of the tracks in the library.

[rstone]

I have some work in progress to address your request. Could you take a look and provide feedback here?

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc- ... uests/1879

With regard to your shuffle question, the way VLC3 handles shuffling is by loading the tracks in order into the queue and then jumping randomly from track to track. VLC4 is supposed to have improvements which will allow the user to see a preshuffled queue, rather than an ordered queue with random next behavior. Pressing previous will traverse the list of already played songs heard during the current playback session only, as the playback sequence (even with history enabled) is not saved across application restarts.

[splinke]

Thanks so much, Robert! After seeing the various options, my favorite is the one that puts the Track Numbers at the end of the Title (in the bigger font), although I realize that is probably one of the more complicated ones, because the number of digits can vary.

Other notes (with the caveat that I may not be accurate in my assumptions):
- Personally, while I like to have the Track Numbers available, I feel they are the least important among the rest of the information--probably because I am usually in shuffle play of my entire library, making them irrelevant other than to know how may total tracks are in my library.
- Given the two lines available for the Title, I think it makes the most sense to include the Track Numbers with the Title, because the truncation will be far less frequent (only with very long Titles) than when it is included on the Artist - Album line (occurs with almost every track).
- I think putting the Track Numbers at the beginning of the Title distracts from the Title.
- I think the Title is the most important, so I like it being on top in the larger font (as it is now).
- If it is possible and not overly complicated, perhaps there could be a "Track Number Display" setting that allows individual users to choose among: (1) Beginning of Album - Artist [current position], (2) End of Title, or (3) Off.

In any event, I am really happy with how VLC works with my Android Auto, and these are just minor tweak requests. I really appreciate your work on this and for considering my feedback.

[TOxMM]

I just posted about this same issue before I found this post, sorry about that. I would prefer not to have the track info shown. The small screen in the top of the dash in my 2010 f150 only has 2 lines and I really don't need to know track info while I'm driving.
FYI The track info isn't showing on the main screen of my Pioneer head unit, it only shows, along with the Title and Artist, on the small screen which also shows temps and messages. It's part of the Ford Sync system but is tied into the Pioneer unit.