Galaxy phones could soon cast media to your car's screen

Android Auto has made connecting your phone to your car's infotainment screen a lot easier. You don't have to carry a separate SD card or USB drive to play music in your car anymore. All you need to do is to connect your Galaxy phone to an Android Auto-compatible car infotainment system and play music that is already stored on the phone or stream it from the internet.

In the future, Android Auto could even allow co-passengers to cast media to a car's infotainment unit screen wirelessly. 9To5Google has discovered text strings in the Android Auto (version 15.9.655104) app's code that hint at Google Cast being an option for Android phones. The text strings are connected to the Media Router framework, which handles media casting, sharing, and streaming.

A similar feature is available on Apple's CarPlay, where a co-passenger can scan a QR code to connect to a CarPlay-connected iPhone and play music in the car via their iPhone.

It is possible that when an Android phone is connected to an Android Auto-compatible in-car infotainment display, other Android phones would be able to see the connected phone as a Google Cast destination. When connected, they could cast music (or maybe even video) from their phone to the Android Auto-connected phone, and that media will be played on the car's infotainment unit display.

Earlier this year, at Google I/O, Google teased that it is working on bringing video apps to Android Auto. Videos can only be played when the car is parked, so that the driver isn't distracted by the video that is playing on the car's screen. The feature only works on devices running Android 16, but it hasn't been launched yet.