Fortunately, teardowns and other advanced hacks allow the skilled developers out there to provide us with an early look at what’s to come in the world of Android Auto, and as it turns out, the most recent releases are paving the way for another welcome improvement.
According to findings shared on reddit by the developer of AA AIO Tweaker, an advanced Android Auto tool providing access to features that haven’t been enabled by Google, the search giant is working on a graphical user interface for messaging apps in the car.
In other words, Android Auto will soon display dedicated icons for select messaging apps, and tapping them would launch a dedicated user interface with a completely new purpose.
WhatsApp and the Google Messages apps are two of the first that could be supported, though right now, enabling their GUI doesn’t seem to make any difference, as the feature is not yet functional.
So what is this GUI supposed to when it’s finally enabled in Android Auto?
“Once launched, Android Auto should start showing notifications of messages coming from that app. But really, no. It doesn’t do that. Any SMS or WhatsApp message will still be shown in the notification center, and not inside the own app,” the developer explains.
In other words, these dedicated GUIs would still display notifications, only they’ll now be grouped per each app and not in a central hub like the notification center.
Does this mean Google would at one point kill off the notification center in Android Auto? That’s hard to anticipate at this point, but the next few Android Auto updates should provide us with a clearer picture of how this feature is supposed to evolve in the long term.
