Google is rolling out a new version of Android Auto in its usual staged fashion, and it's an major update. The new v1.6 build addresses one of the major issues with Android Auto going all the way back to the original release. You can finally browse your full Play Music library from the Android Auto interface. Well, that's what Google says anyway. It doesn't seem to work yet.

Here's the changelog for Android Auto v1.6.

  • Improved phone-car connection reliability
  • Ability to browse your music collection without lockouts while vehicle is stopped
  • Android Auto now available in 19 more countries, incl. Russia, India, Brazil, Austria, Switzerland, and many more countries in Latin America

Since Android Auto launched, you could only access music by voice search, playlists, or radio stations. The annoying thing about voice is that a lot of band names aren't recognized properly. Making playlists for everything is crap too. Maps has always known when you're stationary and allowed enhanced searching, so why can't Play Music do something similar? I guess that's what we're getting now.

I don't know how this works yet as it isn't live for me, even after updating the app. I assume an update to Play Music or Play Services is required to enable it. We've got some other people checking to see if they have full browsing yet, but I think we still have some waiting to do. Aside from that, there's also improved connectivity and more countries for Android Auto. Google has a list of the new countries in emoji format for some reason (technically 18 plus Puerto Rico).

We've got the new version on APK Mirror if you don't want to wait in both ARM and ARM64 versions.

Android Auto (Playboard) | Android Auto (Play Store)