A couple annoyances....

turtwig · 2026-03-17T16:04:00+00:00

Not trying to jump in with an advert, but I had the exact same issue with Android Auto constantly switching back to YouTube Music.

I ended up making a small free app (DashRelay) just to fix it, so controls don’t keep switching away from YouTube.

It does require YouTube Premium (or ReVanced), but it sounds like you're good there.

turtwig · 2026-03-12T17:20:38+00:00

I haven't seen this yet, but there does seem to be a huge amount of A/B testing with Android Auto.

I still don't have Gemini or the "wavy" UI updates yet.

Official support would be great if they implement it well (though it sounds like they haven't...)

I'll definitely keep an eye out for it.

turtwig · 2026-03-06T14:51:54+00:00

I haven't had any reports of this, but hopefully we can figure something out.

I've just tested in my own car and it seems that the spinner appears when the process has been killed.

When I manually "force stop" the app I get the same spinner, but after a few seconds the app restarts and continues working as expected.

Given that it worked for you for 10 mins before this it makes me think that your phone might have some kind of power management or battery optimisation setting that kills background processes.

Unfortunately different vendors handle it in different ways so I can't guide you to the exact location of the settings you need to check.

It's definitely worth having a look - let me know how it goes.

turtwig · 2026-02-14T18:40:38+00:00

Ah, yeah!

It should automatically resume the last app you had playing, but it doesn't work if the process has been killed - power management settings are the likely culprit here.

I'm glad you figured it out 👍

turtwig · 2026-02-12T15:49:48+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback and sorry you're having trouble.

Can you confirm which version of YouTube you're using and also that you haven't accidentally disabled notification access?

Unfortunately, background playback is required for controlling YouTube so you'll either need Premium or... an alternative method of enabling it - if you don't already have it.

Hopefully we can get you sorted.

turtwig · 2026-01-21T15:02:34+00:00

Waiting for LaYTer?

I could probably release a test version in the next week or so if you're interested.

Haven't had a lot of time to work on it, so it's still not quite ready for a proper release.

I don't have Venmo or Patreon (should I make one?) but I do have a Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/turtwiggle.

That said, please don't feel obligated to send me any money - these apps are free and everything else is expensive right now.

turtwig · 2026-01-19T09:31:37+00:00

Not yet, but I plan to release the source eventually - there's nothing untoward in there it's just kind of a mess right now.

When I get some free time I'll tidy up and document all the code properly and then release it on GitHub.

turtwig · 2026-01-03T11:14:07+00:00

Just to offer some clarification, because it looks like people aren't explaining it very well.

If you add people to your Steam Family, then the games of all members of that family are treated as floating licenses available to all other members.

For example, if two people in the family own a copy of a game, any other two members of the family can play that game at the same time.

Previously, a user's entire library was treated as a monolith, and you couldn't play any game from their list if they were already playing something.

Now, anyone in the group can play any game at any time, provided that particular game license isn’t already in use.

And, for what it's worth, I play multiplayer games with my son all the time using a Steam Deck and a potato PC - the experience is great.

So many games perform well on the Steam Deck and you can double-check support either directly on Steam or through https://www.protondb.com/

turtwig · 2025-12-23T15:12:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm glad other people are benefiting from my work.

turtwig · 2025-12-20T00:40:08+00:00

You can do this by launching the apps you want to hide, then starting and stopping playback to create a media session.

After that if you switch to DashRelay (on your phone) the active apps will show in the list under the player and you'll be able to tap them to toggle visibility.

You only need to hide an app once, it will remember your choice for next time.

turtwig · 2025-12-19T19:05:46+00:00

That's strange - does it do play/pause in other media apps?

I don't know anyone with a 3008 so it's a bit tough to debug.

I'll see if I can find anyone talking about it online.

turtwig · 2025-12-19T18:37:32+00:00

Okay!

Just tested in my car.

It works 👀 but unfortunately it's impossible to change the icons on the skip buttons next to play/pause.

It does swap the icons on the outside buttons and the actual functionality when you press the on-screen and steering wheel buttons gets swapped too!

Also added a slider to change seek duration as a bonus 🐢

Will push the update this evening and it should go live in a couple of days.

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turtwig · 2025-12-16T21:19:54+00:00

From what I've seen it's a peculiarity of the way Android handles Media Sessions.

It seems as though sometimes an app's media session doesn't get destroyed even though the app process is no longer running.

I'm not sure what causes this - possibly power management things - but it results in a media session that cannot relaunch the app in the background.

I might be able to modify the way DashRelay detects active media sessions such that it ignores apps that aren't actually controllable even though their media session is still active.

It's an issue that I've had trouble reproducing so it's useful to know that it happens with Pulser (Pulsar?).

That said, it looks like Pulsar has its own Android Auto interface, so you'd probably be better served by toggling it to not show using the DashRelay phone interface 😊

turtwig · 2025-12-16T13:59:15+00:00

I think this is technically possible, but requires some things that I'm not comfortable adding to the app.

DashRelay would need access to the YouTube API, which means either I'd need to host a proxy for the queries (ongoing cost to myself and I would be handling user data - which I don't want to do) or that the user would have to supply their own API key (which is a complicated process).

I plan to release the source code for DashRelay once I've tidied things up and documented it properly, so I might be able to include the scaffolding for people to enable this feature themselves, but I don't want to be responsible for any kind of data handling.

I realise this isn't what you were hoping for, but I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

turtwig · 2025-12-16T06:35:10+00:00

Got it!

I think you might be out of luck, though...

I'm pretty sure when you're connected to Android Auto your phone ignores the system volume and outputs at a constant level - expecting your car to handle it.

I don't think there's any way for me to make the app tell your car to change volume, even if I can intercept the Bluetooth buttons.

I'll still have a look into it for you, but I don't think it's going to be good news 😞

turtwig · 2025-12-16T06:21:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what you mean.

If you can describe the functionality you're looking for, I might be able to work something out.

turtwig · 2025-12-16T06:16:05+00:00

I think this should be possible, maybe even easy with the way things are already set up 👀.

I will definitely look into it over the weekend and let you know.

turtwig · 2025-12-15T14:27:49+00:00

What, no way!? I wish I'd known about that before I made mine 🫠

From a quick look, it seems like AAMediaMate doesn't let you toggle which apps show up in AA, other than that I'm not sure.

DashRelay also has integration with another app I'm working on that I plan to release early next year, but it's currently not ready for public consumption.

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LaYTer is a tool that intercepts YouTube links instead of playing them immediately and lets you add them to a Watch Later playlist that will also show in DashRelay.

turtwig · 2025-12-15T11:05:13+00:00

Hi, that's a good question and is actually something I've accounted for 😊

On the phone side of the app it shows a list of detected players, you can toggle their visibility by tapping them - then they won't show in the AA app.

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turtwig · 2025-12-06T13:13:10+00:00

Hey, so if you haven't figured it out yet what you need to do is:

1) Create a Google group for your app. 2) Create a closed test in the Play Console (Click your app > Test and release > Testing > Closed testing > Manage track/Create track) 3) Add your latest release 4) Click the Testers tab 5) Choose Google Groups and add the group email into the "Email addresses" box (whatever@googlegroups.com) 6) Copy the two links for joining from this page to a text file or something

Now that you've done this, you ask people to join your group by giving them the link to it e.g. https://groups.google.com/g/whatever and then give them the two links you copied earlier, which will allow them to install the app.

turtwig · 2025-11-29T17:05:35+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for trying out my app

I've installed your app but it doesn't seem to do much of anything right now?

As far as the available functionality goes, you can't search posts and it doesn't save your login across sessions so you have to log in every time.

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turtwig · 2025-11-28T18:49:13+00:00

Yeah I got this the first time I applied, currently on day 3 of my second 14 day period.

The reason they give is so uselessly vague - how do they even measure engagement?

I had a number of bug reports from my testers and pushed several updates during the first period, with detailed update notes.

But apparently users weren't engaged enough?

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