Finally, Android Auto Has An Audio Progress Bar

(CTN News) – In the last few months, Android Auto users have been eagerly awaiting a long-promised visual redesign, and it finally started rolling out this month following weeks of beta testing.

As part of its CES 2023 presentation, Google showcased a visual refresh codenamed Cool walk that was a big talking point among attendees.

Android Auto will not only offer a few quality-of-life improvements, but it will also offer a number of safety enhancements.

It has been a while since Google’s infotainment system was first spotted with its newly designed scrubbing bar. However, the system is now finally available in a wider range of models around the world. When you love to listen to audiobooks or podcasts on long drives, it is very difficult to resume listening when you have stopped.

You may have lost your place or just want to return to that memorable part of a song you love to listen to over and over again.

This is if you have paused. In the present situation, the current workaround – utilizing your connected phone to access the progress bar – is not advisable for obvious reasons.

Fortunately, Android Auto will fix that issue with the addition of a playback progress bar on the screen of your car’s infotainment system, as spotted by a Redditor (via 9to5Google) and confirmed by one of our tipsters.

In comparison to the old controls, which only allowed you to restart a track or skip to the next one, this is a huge upgrade.

It has been a long time in the making. During the summer of 2022, Google was first spotted experimenting with this kind of technology.

As a result of the new linear progress bar, the circular progress bar highlighting the play/pause button has been replaced with a linear one, which is visible to all music playback apps compatible with Android Auto.

Although the rollout appears to be a gradual one, at the time of writing there have only been a few reports of it being rolled out to users.

Many people believe that it is the new scrubbing bar that triggered the new Cool walk design upgrade for them, even though these two features were introduced separately at the same time.

I believe that this feature addition will give Android Auto a slight advantage over Apple Car Play in terms of customizability.

This is even though in practice they are starting to look quite similar in terms of the features that they offer. There is still a lack of widespread support for a seek bar in the future.

This important change should also be rolled out to people who are stuck using older versions of Android Auto, so that they can benefit from it as well.

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