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What you need to know
- Google says Assistant driving mode isn’t going away, but big changes are coming.
- Assistant Driving Mode now displays a banner indicating that its main view, a grid of touch-enabled apps, will be discontinued this month.
- Although the name remains, the assistant driving mode has largely been discontinued. The move comes after Google previously canned Android Auto for phone screens and Assistant driving mode dashboards.
Android Auto is a great way to control things like music and maps while driving, if you have a car that supports it. For others, Assistant Driving Mode is a great way to take advantage of your Android smartphone’s touch-friendly controls while driving. However, contrary to what Google says, this month, Driving Assistant mode will be effectively phased out, but not completely.
Google announced in January that it would remove 17 “underutilized” features from Google Assistant. One of them appears to be Assistant driving mode, with the company saying, “Use the app launcher with Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media.” ing. “You can use voice control in Google Maps as well.”
The app launcher is considered one of the biggest features of Assistant Driving Mode, so many thought the entire experience would be removed entirely. That suspicion got some confirmation this week when Android Police noticed a banner appearing in the app launcher in Driving Assistant mode. The banner told users to expect this view to be removed within this month.
However, Google told 9to5Google that’s not the case. actually When the changes take effect on February 7th, Assistant Driving Mode will be removed. The black bar at the bottom of Assistant driving mode will remain and users can still control the Assistant using their voice.
Despite the company’s official comments, it’s clear that Driving Assistant mode, as users knew it, is coming to an end. Perhaps the best feature of this mode was the app launcher with large icons that were easy to touch while driving. This is a feature that will be discontinued, and a new version of Driving Assistant mode released this month will include some of the original functionality.
Google has continually removed or changed driving mode features over the past few years, especially with its focus on Android Auto and Android Automotive. The first version, called Android Auto for Phone Screens, was retired in 2021. The Assistant Driving Modes Dashboard is retired in 2022.
So by the end of this month, all that will remain in Assistant Driving Mode will be the media playback bar and voice control buttons. If you have a car that supports Android Auto, you may not notice the change. But drivers with older cars may be frustrated that the best way to launch apps while driving is disappearing.
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