A revised music player is being released by Android Auto.

A revised music player is being released by Android Auto.

Android Auto hasn't seen any major changes this year, and 2024 is almost over. Rather than releasing the testing releases in public builds, Google promised a number of significant enhancements, including as support for video apps, games, and browsers as part of a beta program.

The most recent production release of Android Auto incorporates a change that appears to be enabled by a server-side switch, as Google continues to subtly improve the user experience. Google began rolling out Android Auto 13.4 earlier this month, but as is customary, no changelogs were made available. It's nearly impossible to determine what's new in a new release without installing it because Google continues to use out-of-date release notes for Android Auto updates.

A new music player for all apps, including Spotify, Apple Music, and others, is being broadly released by Google in the most recent Android Auto update. The release of Android Auto 13.4 over the past week or so has included some of the first significant updates to the platform in a long time. This incorporates several Material You accent colors across the system, as we initially revealed last week. Apart from that, however, Android Auto's music player has also been altered.

The music player's primary design is the same for all audio apps on Android Auto. The layout remains consistent even though buttons may vary, which helps the driver because they don't have to re-learn the layout for every app, which could lead to issues when driving. The music player (shown above) hasn't changed much since the 2023 overhaul of Android Auto, but the 13.4 update is bringing a new look. The music player in Android Auto 13.4 has shifted the album image to the left, making room next to it for the track progress bar, which now displays the track title, artist, and time as before. Additionally, the wording is a little bit smaller to suit. Down below Below that, the buttons have also changed to take up the full width of the display, but they’re pretty similar to how they were before.

The location of the track progress bar is the primary modification.Additionally, this new design makes use of the recently implemented improved Android Auto font.As we've previously noted, this could indicate that Google is getting closer to its "Car Media" upgrade, which would enable Android Auto to play local media from a car, including radio stations. However, there is still no indication that this update has made that live.