What you need to know
- YouTube now works with Android Auto, but only supports audio playback and not video viewing on the car display.
- Google has added proper playback controls like play, pause, and skip for YouTube within Android Auto.
- Users earlier had to control playback from their phone, but now controls appear directly in the car interface.
One app that users have long wanted to work properly with Android Auto is YouTube, and now it sort of does, but you still won’t be able to watch videos in your car.
If you’ve ever used YouTube over Android Auto, you get the audio from the video through your car, but you don’t see the video playing on the head unit. That isn’t changing, but Google is now rolling out proper playback controls for YouTube on Android Auto.
Usually, when you play a YouTube video in your car, you can hear the audio, but you don’t get playback controls like play, pause, mute, or skip in the usual media playback control area like you do with apps like Spotify or YouTube Music. Now, though, the company is finally adding playback controls for YouTube as well.
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(Image credit: Reddit u/IGameShit)
As spotted by Reddit users (via 9to5Google), YouTube appears to be rolling out support for this. You still won’t see videos on your head unit, but you can now control playback easily without having to reach for your phone.
That said, if you want background playback, you’ll still need at least a YouTube Premium Lite subscription, which enables that feature. It’s still not the full YouTube experience users might expect, but it does make playback control much more convenient.
Google is also rumoured to bring the full YouTube experience to Android Auto this summer at Google I/O 2026, but we’ll have to wait a few more months for that.
Android Central’s Take
This feels like one of those small updates that should’ve been there from day one. Not being able to control playback on YouTube in Android Auto always felt unnecessarily limiting. Sure, you still can’t watch videos (and that makes sense), but finally getting proper controls makes the whole experience far less frustrating.
