- #Spotify car thing how to#
- #Spotify car thing android#
- #Spotify car thing code#
- #Spotify car thing Bluetooth#
#Spotify car thing android#
Car Thing’s single-purpose use offers too many shortcomings over simply using your phone in a mount with either the Assistant’s driving mode, the now-deprecated standalone Android Auto, or even just Google Maps/Waze and the music service integration bundled into each.įor one, Car Thing doesn’t offer navigation, and though you can fire up Google Maps separately on your phone and have it read out turn-by-turn directions mixed in with your music, you don’t have the benefit of seeing them on the screen as you would with your phone in a mount or Android Auto. I’ve tried to dance around different ways of saying that, but there aren’t really any. Four of the five buttons on the top/back serve as shortcuts that you can program by long-pressing, but the fifth in the corner takes you to a settings menu where you can do things like pair extra phones, factory reset, restart, or disable the microphone (which isn’t triggered unless you say the “Hey Spotify” hotword, don’t worry). That dial also controls your phone’s volume and play/pause when you’re on the playback screen. The big rotary dial lets you scroll through content, tapping it to select or pressing the smaller button below it to navigate back. If you don’t want to talk to your stereo, you can also navigate via the buttons and screen. That saves a little time compared to navigating to the playlist section manually. (If you’ve used Google Assistant to trigger Spotify, it's similar to that, but with actions and results understandably limited to Spotify.) One particularly convenient thing is that you can ask for Spotify to “show” you things, so if you know it won’t grab the right playlist by name, you can ask to see your playlists and then scroll to the one you want.
![spotify car thing spotify car thing](https://1734811051.rsc.cdn77.org/data/images/full/383493/spotify-launches-car-thing-for-limited-release-how-to-sign-up-for-the-waitlist.jpg)
You can also control playback or save content. There’s a home screen that shows a mix of recommended content, a “Voice” tab that shows things you’ve searched for related to recent vocal queries, and a Your Library tab where all your liked songs and playlists live.Ĭar Thing responds to “Hey Spotify” voice commands that can trigger playlists, albums, specific songs, or anything else you’d like to hear. If you’ve used the Spotify app on any platform, the interface should feel immediately familiar, with side-scrolling lists and identical commands and features. Navigating around the Car Thing interface is surprisingly simple, and there are a few ways you can do it between the screen, voice, and buttons. As soon as your phone connects to whatever mechanism you use for audio, playback will start wherever you last left off. Once things are correctly configured, your phone will automatically connect to the Car Thing when it’s powered on - If you’re not doing anything unusual, that means when you get into your car and start it.
#Spotify car thing Bluetooth#
You can also trigger the setup process manually via the app in Settings -> Car Thing to pair an already-set-up Car Thing to a new device, but just pairing the new phone in the Bluetooth settings menu seems to do the job fine, too.
#Spotify car thing how to#
The first-time steps also guide you through how to mount the phone to your car, but that should be a self-explanatory process for most people.
#Spotify car thing code#
When you plug it in for the first time, the screen displays a QR code you can scan with your phone that takes you to the app and through the process to pair it with your phone via Bluetooth. Car Thing also works with CarPlay and Android Auto, but we used it standalone. Car Thing works with both iOS and Android, but we (hopefully understandably) tested it with the latter. There’s some weirdness if you have a family plan - only the plan’s owner can buy a Car Thing. To use Car Thing you’ll need to be a premium Spotify subscriber, and you’ll need to own a car (duh) and a phone. Short answer: That means you can't read the screen at all while wearing polarized sunglasses while driving, as many people do. Unfortunately, Spotify didn't take into account polarized glasses when choosing the direction or type of polarization on the display itself. The screen has good viewing angles and gets both bright enough and dim enough automatically for use in all driving situations.
![spotify car thing spotify car thing](https://www.hitc.com/static/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1229813279.jpg)
It’s also a good size - not too big that it’s hard to find a spot to put it on your dash, with a screen just large enough to be useful without being obtrusive. You’ll never use it this way, but the Car Thing feels premium and well made in hand.
![spotify car thing spotify car thing](https://www.avtechguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/spotify-unveil-car-thing-dash-car-music-streamer_001-800x445.jpg)
There’s no built-in audio out (more on that later). Power is supplied over USB Type-C via a port on the back.
![spotify car thing spotify car thing](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/spotify-car-thing-2-1280x720.jpeg)
A row of additional buttons on the top of the Car Thing studded between the microphone array offers quick and configurable shortcuts to specific content or playlists and settings, but they’re hard to hit - I wish they were either bigger or somewhere on Car Thing’s face.