I use Android Auto almost every day, and a few things about it drive me absolutely nuts. My wireless connection drops out, message notifications interrupt my music, Gemini struggles with commands, and some apps I want aren’t even on the launcher.

Google rolled out a healthy helping of updates to Android Auto recently, breathing delightfully fresh air into a stale OS. Gemini Intelligence was the highlight of this update, porting agentic AI capabilities over to compatible cars. Gemini can read your messages, emails, and more, give you context in natural language, and basically let you do almost everything you can on your smartphone with Gemini. While Gemini on the go is certainly the star of the show, you might have missed a slightly older announcement from May 2026 that also included plenty of other interesting features.

I've been having some fun experimenting with Android Auto lately. Recently, I discovered I could set up buttons for specific tasks. I enjoyed the customization, so I decided to try something a bit more ambitious. So I tried building a custom Android Auto dashboard that changes based on where I'm driving. It did not go as planned.