The Mountain View-based search giant has been very focused on improving the Android Auto experience since the Coolwalk announcement, so the most recent app updates introduced little to no new features.
This isn’t necessarily bad news, as everyone knows Android Auto needs additional refinements. That’s probably the goal of version 9.5, which just rolled out to the production channel.
Android Auto 9.5 first appeared in beta for just a few days, so Google moved pretty quickly to promote it to the stable channel. But as per the company’s typical approach, the new version comes with no changelog. As such, no one knows exactly what’s new in this latest update.
More information should emerge in the coming days and more people will receive the update.
Chances are that Android Auto 9.5 will further polish the Coolwalk experience. Android Auto’s redesign introduces several new bugs, one of which caused the lower part of the screen to freeze shortly after launch. The glitch is already pretty widespread, but so far Google hasn’t announced any timing information for a possible patch.
Coolwalk is going live in phases, but most users have already received the new interface.
The main highlight of Coolwalk is the dashboard screen. Similar to the CarPlay dashboard, the Coolwalk screen allows users to run multiple apps side-by-side. Thanks to this feature, you no longer have to keep only one app in focus, as the map-based interface makes it possible to run navigation apps and audio players on the same screen. Google Maps and Waze already support the Coolwalk interface, so they can run in the dedicated navigation screen alongside Spotify and YouTube Music.
Google also has more things to tackle in Android Auto Coolwalk. The company removed the weather information from the status bar when the new design was released. In fact, the status bar itself has been removed and all data has been moved to the taskbar, minus the weather conditions.
Google has added a separate weather map on portrait screens, but devices that use landscape aspect ratio currently lack this feature. The company previously promised to find a way to bring the weather data back to all devices, but no additional information has been offered since then. Android Auto 9.5 doesn’t seem to bring this weather map to landscape media units.
Since the rollout is happening in stages through the Google Play Store, you can download Android Auto 9.5 right now with the dedicated APK installer. The update will happen automatically once you launch the APK file on your Android device.