Phone to display music visualiser as music plays through Android Auto?

[King Mustard]

I currently plug my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Android 14) into my car and use Spotify to play music.

I have tried to get various music visualisers from the Play Store to visualise the music on my phone screen but none appear to 'detect' that music is playing. The closest feed I got was listening via the phone's microphone but I would prefer a direct feed from the music.

Are Android apps able to access the correct API whilst the phone is connected via Android Auto?

 

[SpookDroid]

Do those visualizers work with another music source (i.e. local files, YouTube, etc.)? If they just fail with Spotify, check the option in that app to allow 3rd party apps to 'see' what you're playing (it's called "Device Broadcast Status").

If the apps work when playing on the phone but not when playing through Android Auto, the problem may be that the 'source' of audio is no longer the phone, so the apps may not see that.

 

[King Mustard]

Do those visualizers work with another music source (i.e. local files, YouTube, etc.)? If they just fail with Spotify, check the option in that app to allow 3rd party apps to 'see' what you're playing (it's called "Device Broadcast Status").

If the apps work when playing on the phone but not when playing through Android Auto, the problem may be that the 'source' of audio is no longer the phone, so the apps may not see that.

'Device Broadcast Status' has always been turned on, but it still does not appear that music visualiser apps I have tried have been able to 'tap in' to the feed.

 

[SpookDroid]

Do they work when not on Android Auto?

 

[King Mustard]

Do they work when not on Android Auto?

They do.

 

[SpookDroid]

Ah, then yeah, most likely without a coding change, not sure those would work on AA (since technically the phone isn't playing the media, AA is). The only way I see this working is if you were to use BT to play the media on your car (but obviously this wouldn't go through AA).

 

[King Mustard]

Ah, then yeah, most likely without a coding change, not sure those would work on AA (since technically the phone isn't playing the media, AA is). The only way I see this working is if you were to use BT to play the media on your car (but obviously this wouldn't go through AA).

Android Auto is just a display, basically. It's still the phone playing the media.

 

[SpookDroid]

Android Auto is just a display, basically. It's still the phone playing the media.

Except it's not... not really. Android Auto, because it still communicates with the car itself, it's a lot more locked down than your phone's system, and effectively bubbles up into its own environment (hence why you can't just play videos or install apps directly on an unmodified version of AA). When you're playing media, while it is your phone that's doing the streaming/processing, the output is NOT your phone anymore (which is what the visualizers monitor and have access to). Now media is being played in the AA environment, which is closed and restricted, and unless the visualizer is coded to monitor the AA media status (which I'm not even sure it's something you can do in stock because, again, security for car systems...), they wouldn't be able to display anything based off of what's playing.