Android Auto Future Support?

[Zerios]

Just wondering if Android Auto support will ever return. I hope it will because I love VLC.

[Dekans]

Auto is back on v3.1

You can register to beta here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.videolan.vlc

[Zerios]

Auto is back on v3.1

You can register to beta here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.videolan.vlc

Does the beta version support Android Auto already? I remember downloading and trying a beta one without a success, but I didn't have to register to download it when I did, so I'm wondering if this will be same or different.

[Dekans]

Yes

[Ioniq]

I downloaded 3.1.0-RC2 from APKMirror and it is great to see Android Auto functionality coming back.

I noticed on defect but don't have a way to report it. I'm hoping by posting it here Dekans or another developer will see this and be able to enter it into your bug tracking system.

I have 5000 tracks on my phone. When running VLC on the phone (Samsung Galaxy S7 running Android 8.0) without Android Auto the "Tracks" tab loads fine. However when running VLC in Android Auto, selecting "Songs" VLC goes into a loop showing what I presume is a loading icon spinning. It never seems to come out of this loop and never displays a list of songs. My guess is Android Auto is requesting the song list and it is so big it either takes forever to compile or load into AA. I'm going to "Songs" because I want to shuffle across all the tracks on my phone. The only way to do that in AA is to get be in the Songs category then select shuffle that I can see in AA. If you go through Artist or Album, it will only shuffle within the album being played. From what I can tell, this is a User Interface limitation in AA. From what I can tell, based on what I've observed in AA, this is my best guess of what is taking place. To get around this, what I've noticed another AA compatible music player does is when you select "Songs" it does not load give AA a list of all the songs, it simply provides 2 items- "Play" and "Play shuffled". You can then select "Play Shuffled" to do exactly as the name suggests.

Given the UI limitations AA induces, shuffling in the Songs selection seems to be the only path to shuffle across all tracks and the music player has no other way to get that directive from the user.

Hopefully I'm analyzing the situation in AA correctly such that this all makes sense. To reproduce the problem, while in AA, simply go to Songs on a phone with lots of tracks and you'll hopefully see the issue.

Please let me know if this post is helpful or if there is another mechanism by which I can report this anomaly.

[Dekans]

Yep, AA browsing is not really cool. It expect all items at once.
With a big collection, it's an issue.

I'll take a look to a 'shuffle' option then

[Ioniq]

Yep, AA browsing is not really cool. It expect all items at once.
With a big collection, it's an issue.

I'll take a look to a 'shuffle' option then

Cool, thanks for looking into that. The AA UI imposes some interesting limitations that makes the apps alter how they interact. The AA expectation of all items at once does not align well with having a "Songs" selection in their UI, so music players have to work around that in some fashion. This appears to be one of those funky cases, but well worth implementing as 'shuffle all' is a common use model.

[Crazed_by_Penguins]

I would like to see this as well! My music library is nowhere near this big so I don't have this issue, but I pretty much always play my music using the shuffle all feature. I've not been able to find this option within Android Auto, so every time I want to listen to music in my car, I've been navigating to VLC on my phone and starting the music from there. (I assumed this was an Android Auto limitation and not a VLC one, as I'm also not seeing this feature in the AA implementation of Google Play Music.)

[Dekans]

I just did the implementation : https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc- ... equests/36

It should be in 3.1 final version soon

[Ioniq]

I just did the implementation : https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc- ... equests/36

It should be in 3.1 final version soon

Awesome! Thanks Dekans. I'll check it out on my vehicle when the next 3.1.0 RC comes out.

Such a great example of open source implementation vs the corporate giants

[Ioniq]

@Dekans, I played with your new implementation in RC3 yesterday. It looks great. Thanks for tossing that in so quickly.

I notice you submitted some changes for the AA media load issue I submitted as well. Looking forward to checking that out in the next build.