Google is rolling out Android Auto 16.1 widely as the latest beta, Android Auto 16.2, hints at what is coming next.

Earlier this month, Google started rolling out Android Auto 16.0 with a new media player design that added a splash of Material 3 Expressive to media apps. The change was widely available, but quickly resulted in a number of users finding that their steering wheel controls had suddenly stopped working.

Later beta releases – Android Auto 16.1 – seem to have fixed the problem, and that’s the version that’s now widely rolling out via the stable track. The update brings no other major changes either, but it does bring back the media player redesign that Google appeared to have rolled back temporarily to avoid the steering wheel issues.

So that’s it for the stable track, but what about the Android Auto beta?

The latest beta release is Android Auto 16.2, which arrived this week without any especially notable changes. There’s nothing user-facing as far as we’ve been able to tell, but there are some tidbits behind the scenes.

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

In our teardown of Android Auto 16.2, we noticed new and updated strings that hint at continued work around radio station and A/C controls, features that Google has been working on for a long time now.

• <string name=”control_off”>OFF</string>
• <string name=”radio_node_stations_display_name”>Stations</string>
• <string name=”control_ac_off”>OFF</string>
• <string name=”control_ac_off”>A/C OFF</string>

There’s been no major progress on either of these features for quite a while, but Google appears to be working in the background on these again. There’s no sign of a rollout yet, of course, and there are still a lot of questions around compatibility on both radio and A/C controls.

With Android Auto 16.2 now in beta, it’s likely we’ll see a stable rollout within the next few weeks but, again, there are no major user-facing changes anyway, at least in this first beta version.

If you’ve installed Android Auto 16.1, let us know in the comments below if it has fixed any problems with your steering wheel controls, or if it happened to deliver Gemini support.

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