I might be completely misunderstanding the way Android Auto/CarPlay function. They’re both essentially just screen projections from your phone to the in-car display, right?
Since my car only supports CarPlay, is there any way for me to “trick” it into thinking I have an iPhone plugged in and get it to allow my phone to display the Android Auto interface on the screen instead?
What sick fuck makes a car that only supports one brand of phone? When did we get on this corporate technocratic timeline and how do we get off?
Toyota, between the years of 2018 and 2019.
Unfortunately Android Auto and CarPlay are baked into the head units. If it’s not there, it’s not there.
Right, it’s been tricky to phrase exactly what I’m looking to do though. My hope is that I can use the CarPlay function in the head unit, but instead of having an iPhone plugged in and actually projecting the CarPlay interface like the car expects, I want my Android phone to “pretend” to be an iPhone as far as the car is concerned but still project the Android Auto interface instead. I guess I what I need is for it to copy just the protocol that CarPlay uses.
It sounds like that Ottocast box mentioned below will do that through some sort of translation between the two, so I guess I’ll give it a try soon.
All that thing does is remove the need for a usb cable to make the normal stereo act like the newer fancier cars that offer wireless CarPlay. I haven’t heard of a way to use Android on CarPlay.
Things are already complicated asf due to the MFI chip being needed to do anything hacky with CarPlay. It usually requires that adapter ottocast or something similar to be able to interface. Any FOSS implementations of CarPlay on desktops also require an MFI chip.
I totally get what you mean though, unfortunately it’s closed source to shit and I don’t think there’s any way to translate the two protocols :(
Buy an ottocast on Amazon, should solve your problem
I think I’ve seen these before, but it wasn’t super clear to me if it would do what I was hoping. Have you used one before? Would the Android Auto only model still connect to a car with CarPlay, or would I need to get the “universal” model for that?
I have an older Picasou model (same thing as Ottocast) and it uses Carplay over USB, but allows wireless Android Auto from your phone. Added bonus is that you can run full screen apps that native AA doesn’t let you use, eg. YouTube, etc.
I use it for my 4WDing, so I can use my 4WD maps app (which doesn’t natively work in AA).
I’m not sure back when I bought mine there was only one model. When I plug mine in, I can set it to android auto or Apple carplay, but it doesn’t matter because my android auto phone interfaces with it just fine on either setting
Message the guy selling them he’s been pretty responsive in the past
