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Android Auto will get a dedicated app for ‘Phone Screens’ soon

Android Auto recently got a huge redesign, but the company had previously confirmed that the experience would be leaving smartphone screens as Assistant’s Driving Mode released. Now, it seems Google is backtracking that with a new “Android Auto for Phone Screens” app.

Discovered on a support page from Google (via Android Police), the company explains what Android Auto users who use only their phone can do going forward. Just recently, we found evidence that Google was preparing to shut down that experience very soon.

With Android 10, the experience is slightly handicapped because Auto is now built into the platform, meaning a dedicated app download isn’t required. That’s great for those of us with Auto-compatible head units, but not so great if you’d like to use the phone’s experience.

To give those users another option, Google says it will be releasing an “Android Auto for Phone Screens” app sometime soon. There’s no timeline beyond “coming soon” attached to this release, and details are fairly scarce as well. Does this just keep legacy functionality? Does it use the new Android Auto UI? Is it just a link to the Assistant Driving Mode? At the moment, we simply don’t have answers for any of these.

Google says more information on this new app will be available soon, so all we can do for the time being is stay tuned.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing a separate app called “Android Auto for Phone Screens” in the Play Store. You can download this app to continue using the phone screen version of Android Auto. More information is coming soon.

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