Android Auto tests a smarter way to display games on your screen (APK teardown)
Andy Walker / Android Authority
TL;DR Android Auto is changing how games are displayed.
Games no longer take up the whole screen when opened.
Users no longer have to swipe down to see the back and exit buttons.
A wave of changes is headed for Android Auto in the near future. Not only is the platform being prepared for Gemini integration, but we also recently noticed that its in-progress light theme looks like it's almost ready for prime time. In today's APK teardown, we have found yet another change that's on its way, this time for the way games are displayed on screen.
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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
If you play games on Android Auto, then you're probably familiar with how they're presented on your car's display. When you tap on the app, that game opens up to take over the entire screen. Since all of the screen real estate is occupied, there's no room for buttons to take you back or exit the game. Instead, you have to swipe down from the top of the display to see these options.
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
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While doing some detective work in Android Auto (version 14.4.152004-release.daily), we spotted that games no longer appear to go full screen. These apps now only take up the majority of the screen, leaving room for the back and app drawer buttons to stay visible. These buttons appear on the right side of the window.
As you may have guessed, the back button acts as a back button for the game. So if you find yourself deep in the game's menus, you can use this back button to navigate your way back to a previous menu. If you're not in any menus, tapping on the back button will allow you to exit the game. Meanwhile, the app drawer button, unsurprisingly, opens the app drawer. If you open the app drawer while in a game, your game will continue to run in the background.
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This change takes away the need to swipe down from the top of the screen, removing the extra step required to access the buttons you need. You can check out the video below to see these buttons being used in the game Angry Birds.
This wasn't the only change we found in Android Auto today. We also discovered that Google is making a head-scratching tweak to the media player UI that could relocate your playback controls.
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