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.
Some head units report a size their screen isn't, then crop or squash the
picture onto it. Settings, on the phone and the car, now take the screen's
real size and how the car fits it. Crop keeps the UI and taps inside the
part the car shows, like a car's own margins. Squash draws for the real
shape and stretches it over the frame on the GPU, map apps included, so
the car's squash puts it back.
The car preview can also draw at the last car's size, this device's whole
screen, or a size typed in, for head units running Gearslip on their own.
Set in car Settings. Off "Always show", the bar floats over the map, so
hiding it never resizes the map app's surface; the app is told the bar
covers the bottom while it shows. The arrival card no longer counts as
covering the map, so Waze's speedometer sits level with it.
Map apps' own voice prompts can't reach the car over USB, so Gearslip reads
the turn the cluster already gets and says it through the car's directions
sink, which ducks the music. On by default, with a switch in car settings.
USB audio needs Android's screen-sharing consent every drive. A new Car audio setting on the phone and car screens picks Bluetooth instead, and the first refusal opens a dialog offering Bluetooth, asking again, or the one-time adb command.
Every screen reached from Home has a themed back button in its header. A new Exit tile
asks the car to show its own interface, as Android Auto's does. All writes to the car
now go through one thread, so reading never waits on a write; LIVI no longer stalls
for two seconds at a time. Touches go to the front of the main thread's queue.
Gearslip now reads messages aloud and takes replies by voice. It asks
whether to reply, reads the reply back and sends it after a countdown.
Say "cancel" or "change it" to stop or redo it, or tap a quick reply.
Speech-to-text runs on the phone with whisper.cpp and a small Whisper
model, so voice works without Google services. The model ships in the
repo, so a fresh clone builds with nothing to download.
New messages show as one card at the top right, with a bar counting
down to when it closes or sends.
Other changes:
- Steering wheel buttons, knobs and D-pads drive the car screen.
- Smoother car audio: chunks wait for the car instead of dropping.
- Sharper, more responsive video.
- The Gearslip switch in Settings now stops it taking the USB
connection.
- Apps that refuse Gearslip say so instead of loading forever.
- The phone asks for notification permission.
- The home screen stays upright.
- The car screen shows what's new after an update.
Push-to-talk voice control, gated behind experimental settings alongside a new raw vehicle sensor screen. Spotify now shows as partial instead of working since its browse tile rejects Gearslip as a host. Fixed a gap where a live nav app couldn't take a fresh destination without a full reconnect.
- First run now asks for permissions one at a time, each on its own screen with an Allow or
Skip, instead of firing every system dialog at once from a cold start
- The head unit certificate can be downloaded straight from the opencardev/aasdk repository
with one tap, on top of the existing adb-staged and file-import paths; Settings shows which
source is active and lets an imported or downloaded certificate be removed
- A phone app on the car screen: a keypad and a searchable contacts list, with a confirmation
card before every call
- The web browser draws its own on-screen keyboard for a page's text fields, so a search box or
address bar can be typed into from the car screen
- Media player rework: a dedicated Now Playing tab with a bigger, screen-size-aware layout, an
Up Next tab showing the app's real queue, and Browse/Lyrics tabs that share the same rail
- Waze and Google Messages are marked broken instead of pretending to work; Google's own dialer,
Assistant, and Android Auto entries are hidden from the car launcher entirely; Aardvark and
Vivi Music are marked tested and working
- A help screen replaces the old wall of setup text on the home screen
- The display-calibration screen is gone - it did its job
The head unit offers a media sink, but Android answers Setup with an
empty reply instead of a Config message. AudioLink now falls back to
the advertised sink after 2.5s. AudioCaptureService captures by audio
usage, not by app, so switching media apps costs nothing further and
one grant covers a whole drive.
A one-time adb command (PROJECT_MEDIA) removes the consent dialog
itself; the setup screen now includes it as a copyable step, next to
the existing mic-permission step.
Capture counts as a screen share, so Android 15 hides notification
contents while it runs. ScreenShareGuard lifts that protection for
the length of the capture, with a second adb grant
(WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS), and restores it afterward, including after a
crash.
The phone keeps playing what it captures, so AudioCaptureService also
mutes STREAM_MUSIC for the drive and restores it on every exit path.
Adds a debug bench (BenchAudioSink, CarPreviewActivity --ez audio
true) for testing the audio path without a car, and a unit test that
rebuilds the real head unit's ServiceDiscoveryResponse from a logged
session to confirm the media and guidance sinks are found correctly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Weather from Open-Meteo with a place name, a forecast screen and a nav bar icon; a fresh
location fix is requested when the last one is stale
- Map controls are solid, one size, and fade out after four seconds; pinch to zoom works
because every finger now reaches the app
- Map templates draw their content in a floating card; toggle and radio rows show their state,
the Back and Pan actions work, and details text and buttons are larger
- Home player gains Lyrics and Minimise buttons; minimised, it lives in the nav bar
- Media apps that hide their library show what they are and can still be controlled; apps that
refuse Gearslip as a host say why
- Debug mode switch, session report in the log, and log sharing as a file attachment
- Launcher, phone apps, weather and calendar load at startup
- Web app opens DuckDuckGo by default
- Home screen lists the setup steps; the launcher marks apps tested and working
- Nav bar is icon-only and shorter, with a now-playing pill on non-home screens
- Clock opens a calendar and weather dashboard (adds READ_CALENDAR)
- Web page URL is now set from the car's Settings screen
- Launcher app scan and weather are cached
- Home player gains skip buttons and a larger cover
Seb3thehacker