Turn off Samsung music autoplay

by Bogdan Popa

In other words, you drive with Android Auto on the head unit, disconnect your phone and then get inside the house, only for the app to launch the music player on your phone hours later, totally out of the blue.

Needless to say, the whole thing has caused some pretty awkward moments for users out there, especially because Android Auto starts blasting music at random times all of a sudden.

Same exact thing with Samsung S20+, happened while I was in doctors office waiting room. Pandora started playing on its own at a loud volume, there was not an app to close, had to turn off the phone, someone explains on Googles forums.

The good news is the search giant is already investigating the whole thing, though, for the time being, no ETA has to been provided as to when a fix could go live for Android Auto users out there.

How to temporarily fix the problem
Fortunately, while everybodys waiting for Google to come up with a fix in an Android Auto update, a workaround that seems to do the trick has already been found.

What you need to do is launch Android Auto on your mobile device and then fire up the settings screen. Search for a menu called Connected devices and then expand the Connection preferences section. Look for the Driving mode entry, tap Turn on automatically, then When driving is detected and switch it to Off.

As a summary, here are the steps you need to follow in Android Auto to disable this setting:

Settings > Connected devices > Connection preferences > Driving mode > Turn on automatically > When driving is detected > Off

In theory, what the option does is control how Android Auto runs automatically, so once you turn it off, you might notice that the app no longer fires up on its own when you connect the smartphone to the car. In other words, you need to manually launch Android Auto every time when you need it.

Because Android Auto can automatically resume playing media, once the app starts, it also runs the music player you used in the previous session. By the looks of things, Android Auto blasting music all of a sudden is a result of a bug causing the app to incorrectly detect it needs to launch. So theoretically, its not only the music player blasting music all of a sudden, but Android Auto also launching at random times, in turn instructing the audio app to run and play a song.

At this point, this is pretty much the only workaround known to exist, and while its not necessarily the most convenient, it gets the job done and prevents the music from starting playing in the middle of the night.

In case youre wondering, the bug doesnt seem to be tied to a specific car or phone model, as the same thing has been reported on Google Pixel phones, Samsung, and devices from other brands. The music app doesnt make a difference either, as Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music are all affected, simply because its Android Auto that instructs them to start playing the music for no reason.

For now, downgrading to an earlier version of Android Auto doesnt seem to make any difference, and the recently introduced 6.0 build comes without a fix in this regard.