alt Hacker NewsUnfortunately that's not quite true, since the "app screen" on the media display during Android Auto use has an additional "Toyota" icon that AFAIK isn't coming from my phone.
What's more concerning is that it's entirely unclear exactly what information is shared over the Android Auto link, in my case, over Bluetooth.
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adestefan • today at 7:42 PM
That icon is a "close Carplay/Auto" button. My Subaru has a Subaru button; my wife's Mazda has a Mazda button.
There's a protobuf-based API for two-way communication between the Android Auto app and the head unit [0]. It depends on what the headunit supports, but this includes data such as GPS location, steering wheel button activation, accelerometer data, parking brake activation, gear selection, touch screen input, dimmer switch position, odometer, and much more.
A lot of this has obvious use within the AA interface; for example, the parking brake position is used to prevent scrolling too far through lists, and the car's GPS is usually much more accurate than the phone's and better on the phone battery.
0: https://github.com/f1xpl/aasdk/tree/development/aasdk_proto (pretty old reverse-engineering effort)