An app adds one meta-data line to its manifest and Gearslip marks it Works with Gearslip in the
Recommended apps list. Tapping an app opens its page, with an Open or Get button. A README badge
for app developers is in docs/badge, documented in BUILDING_APPS.md.
Music plays through Gearslip's player from the app's playback session, pressing its Play key when
it isn't running; messages show from its notifications. Added apps can be removed from the Apps card.
Bookmarks are added from the star in the car, from the phone's settings, or by sharing a page to
Gearslip from any browser. Ads and trackers are blocked with EasyList and EasyPrivacy, or any list
added by its address, refreshed weekly on Wi-Fi, and YouTube's video ads are skipped.
A Skoda, a VW, an Audi and a Bolt all dropped the phone's Bluetooth audio once Android Auto was
up. If Bluetooth audio to the car was connected when it showed Gearslip and drops after, that
car's music goes through Gearslip from then on, remembered per car, and the car screen says so.
Picking Bluetooth by hand clears what was learned. When capture stays silent while Spotify
plays, the car screen says Spotify doesn't let its sound be passed on.
The Bolt in #18 stayed connected only once Gearslip passed it the phone's Bluetooth address,
which was hidden in Settings. After a paired car connects without it, Home asks once per car
and opens About phone. Coming back, Gearslip offers the address it finds on the clipboard. The
car screen says once to finish a step on the phone when parked.
A VW MIB2 drops an already paired phone's Bluetooth when Gearslip
connects over USB, because nothing tells it the two are the same phone
(#28). Android Auto says so on the car's Bluetooth channel with the
phone's address, which Android hides from apps. Settings now takes the
address typed in by hand; with it, Gearslip opens that channel on every
connection to a paired car and sends the address. Without it, nothing
changes.
A 2025 Nissan's Bosch unit drops the link a second after every turn
on its directions channel while its music channel is open, and it
plays music through nothing else (#35). A new car setting, off by
default, leaves the directions channel alone: each turn is mixed into
the music with the music turned down under it, or, when nothing is
playing, goes out on the music channel on its own under ducking focus.
Turned on under Settings > Connection, Gearslip's car screen fills the device's own
display as its home app. An All apps page opens any other app full screen, Back and
a head unit's keys work the car UI, and Phone hides on devices that can't call.
Phones never see Gearslip offered as a home app unless it's switched on.
A certificate the car calls not valid yet or expired, but that is fine by the
phone's clock, now says to set the car's date and time. A start that hasn't
reached the car's screen after 45 seconds says what to try, for cable and wireless.
Size scales Gearslip's own screens but can't reach a hosted app, which
draws from the density it's handed. On a short screen those apps stay
small. Car display density, under Screen after Size, is From car or 160
to 240 DPI, and the video's resolution stays the same.
CarEnvironment.frame is what the display and hosted apps already read, so
the choice goes in there, once a session starts: the display and the apps
on it can't disagree mid-drive. Reconnecting or reopening the preview
applies a change. Phone mirroring keeps the car's own density, and the
cluster has its own.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Short car screens fill up fast, and a phone can offer dozens of car apps
that a driver never opens there. The drawer had no way to leave one out.
The Apps card comes first under Car, with one row per tile, all ticked.
Unticking a row takes the tile out of the drawer at once. It stays pinned
to the nav bar if it was, and Gearslip's own tiles aren't listed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Seb3thehacker