Hi. I am trying to connect my phone to my car audio, a 2022 Ford via USB (I do not use bluetooth audio and I am not interested in Android auto). When I connect, first a screen pops up on the phone saying there is no compatible app installed, then, if I mess around with the USB connection settings my car stereo will recognize the phone but I cannot browse the device (empty). I don’t even care about browsing the phone. All I want is the audio to route thorough the car stereo when I plug in the USB cable, just like it does when I hook up an iPhone. Thank you
Can you find any documentation from Ford forums or other that explain a bit more, like maybe there is a companion app required, etc? I guess “more information needed”.
If all that you require is audio out, you could find a USB-C to 3.5mm audio out adapter may be adequate, and less to tinker with. But then it won’t charge at the same time. Maybe there is an adapter that will handle both.
Tyr to go to the Settings in your phone and in the search bar type USB. It should show you a LOT of possibilities to tune up the usage of your USB. The setting which configures who is controlling the USB (either connected device or phone itself) is to be found in Developper settings and it should be called Device controlling USB. Try set it to Connected device - it could help you control your phone from connected car stereo.
Hi. Thank you for both replies. 2022 Fords don’t have a 3.5mm aux jack (and the quality would be poor). I should have mentioned, I have done all you recommend, even reset my phone, The USB settings are very buggy but I got it to the right setting where the car recognizes the phone. I NEED to resolve this. I cannot live without being able to use my phone as car music player. Where else can I go to get this working? I don’t mind paying. Thank you
I don’t know if this will be an acceptable solution for you. But I have had some experience with cars in the 2018 - 2022 range of manufacturing dates.
The vehicle may require a USB 2.0 connection. I had one car (a 2018 Toyota) where I had to get a USB 2.0 USB drive and populate it with mp3 files. I had migrated to lossless codecs early on and had to effectively downgrade my music files. The vehicle would not see the phone as a disc drive. Only a USB drive would work.
UPDATE: So i updated my system and now the following happens: when I plug the phone into my car, the annoying “no compatible app installed” window comes on. I click cancel, then wait for about 1 minute, it “gives up” signaled by 2 vibrations and starts charging. At that point I can choose PTP in the USB connection without the annoying " app not installed" window popping up. Low and behold, audio from my phone starts playing on the car stereo. But here is the creepy thing: It does not play whatever the phone plays, it plays ONLY the videos I recorded with my phone camera. When I browse the device on my car screen, the ONLY folder I can navigate to is the folder containing the videos. (even if I could navigate to the music folder it would not be a perfect fix as I want to use my phone app to play the music).
I understand I won’t get a good answer here and I also understand that I cannot demand from IODE that they fix this issue (the problem with products you don’t pay for.) So my question is, does anyone know of a very technical forum where I can as the programmers who program this? Alternatively, is there a place where I can pay for them to fix this issue? I think wanting the audio o exit via USB is a pretty basic request and it should be fixed. Thank you.
This is a message on the car screen, right? I am guessing it is attempting to auto-enable Android Auto, but since you don’t want to use it, maybe in your car settings you can disable AA?
BUT, maybe the solution is that you shouldn’t use “PTP” mode (that is “Picture Transfer Protocol”, thus only camera video sound may work). Instead what happens with “MTP” (“Media Transfer Protocol”)?
To look at the issue a bit differently, I know you don’t want it, but wired AA is working well, you can use the “stub Google apps” which just fake out AA to think you have the Google App, Google Speech Services, and Google Maps installed (when you don’t), and you could also deny any network to the AA app itself (I think), even though it is the official Google Android Auto App. I think you could deny access to phone, sms, etc. too. I guess I will be trying next time I have access to a car supporting AA if I can prevent everything and it would still work for media playing only (no location data or phone / sim access).
No, “no compatible app installed” is on the phone, not the car. So my car tells me to use MTP, however there is NO MTP setting under the USB connected device settings, onlyfile transfer, USB tethering, Midi, PTP, no data transfer, And I do have the newest version of iodeos. Weird.
Yes, I thought about using AA with the stub apps but normal USB audio is just so simple. Plug it in and it just works. So I want to try a little longer to figure this out.
But this might be the wrong place since no one seems to know. Any idea where the would be a better place to ask this question (android programming forum?)? Thank you
sfx_Android Matrix room:
Thanks for the link. I’ll try that.
UPDATE: So I tried Android Auto, although I don’t want it. It worked with the stub apps and I could get used to it but there is one dealbreaker: AA turns on bluetooth. First off, I am appalled that an app can turn on the BT radio without my permission, secondly, how can I prevent this from happening again? (Yes, I did enable developer options in the AA settings and disabled wireless AA setting). Thanks
Yup, I was surprised by this too. This thread has some discussion (but some points are a few years old):
https://xdaforums.com/t/how-to-prevent-android-auto-from-establishing-bluetooth-connection.4478463/
Some hilighted comments are:
- There may be a setting to disable Bluetooth in Android Auto (car side) settings (?) but maybe not on newer Android versions like we have.
- If you remove phone permissions from the Android Auto app on your phone it may not then enable bluetooth. Also take out SMS, etc. that you don’t want it to have.
- Last post was from a few days back, this user fully disabled bluetooth on their phone. Not sure if you use it for calls, etc. though.
Anyway, it would take a bit broader digging and testing, I would hope it is still possible one way or another. Keep us updated (or maybe someone else will point us both in the right direction 
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So I want to report that removing permissions from the phone and SMS apps change nothing. AA turns on BT. I turn it back off and it turns it back on immediatelly. The car also turns it on. I understand that AA is a system app yet it makes me uncomfortable that the app and not me is in charge of BT. In the car when I turn off BT it warns: “will turn off AA”. Is there a way to completely disable BT? I never use it anyway. Thank you
If you don’t use BT at all, then look at the xda forum link I posted above. The last entry has a command you can run from adb to disable bt entirely. I tested this and it does work:
adb shell cmd package disable-user com.android.bluetooth
In my light testing, if I then try to force enable BT, the phone does a soft reboot. So “here be dragons” possibly. If you want to re-enable because it has unintended negative consequences, this will do it:
adb shell cmd package enable com.android.bluetooth
Hi.that helped disabling bluetooth (and it feels good to be in control) but did nothing for my audio dilemma. My ford does only allows Android auto via bluetooth, so I’ll scarp the Android auto idea. I dont know. maybe I have to sell the phone and go back to apple. I need music in my car. Nobody knows how to fix this. Thanks
Barring others doing more testing, I’ll need to wait until I can borrow (or steal a car that supports Android Auto to do some more testing on how (or if?) I can use it without having an active bluetooth connection to the car (as well as the wired Android Auto connection). I think you did this already, but there may be settings in Android Auto (on your car and / or on your phone) to disable “wireless Android Auto”, if those are on that may be part of the issue.
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Just FYI - I posted this on the BraX3 Forum in a similar thread there - might be of some use or interest here:
So as promised I tested this on my 2018 Mazda just to see if it worked via USB using the built in Mazda infotainment System and my BraX3 phone - it did first time and easily.
I just connected the USB to my non-Android Auto USB Port (if you connect to the Android Auto enabled USB Port the Car Infotainment Media Player cannot talk to the phone’s storage because Android Auto overrides it - at least on my Mazda - see note below at very bottom). I then selected this device and data transfer in the USB connection settings and viola, the Car Unit started scanning the storage for music and after 1-2 minutes it was all visible and playing directly on the car head unit via USB without any AA active.
So while a Ford with it’s Sync3 system may be different I highly suspect it’s largely the same. I also disabled Bluetooth in the car system (but not on the phone) while I tested this to eliminate any conflicts or confusion at the phone end from multiple connections.
Key Points (from successful connection to a Mazda):
- Do not connect via a USB port that has Android Auto enabled for the car’s system.
- Ensure once connected you have set the USB connection on your phone to “This Device” (i.e. the phone) and “Data Transfer”.
- Give your car time to read the phone storage (it likely will want to do this every time it’s connected).
If you have an Android Auto capable system in your vehicle with more than 1 USB port I would expect 1 port is specifically identified as the “Android Auto” connection port with a label/icon/symbol. If you have multiple ports and none are marked (so all identical) or you only have 1 port total, then I expect all are Android Auto enabled and it may never work. BUT I would make sure you try it with every available port (if you haven’t already) in case one of them is just a basic USB port for sticking a USB-stick or an older phone into…
Note 1: It’s likely the car media player reads the entire storage of the phone that’s not locked, so might be a minor security or privacy risk (e.g. I have contacts blocked on phone so the car can’t copy them via USB or Bluetooth, but leave phone and media accessible so I can use the basic in car system instead of AA in an emergency).
Note 2: My Mazda, as noted is 2018 model, on road in mid-2019, and this model series came with Car Play/Android Auto capability by default, but only the top end sport & exec models had it actually preinstalled. My model is a standard model that didn’t have it by default; when I purchased the vehicle when it was physically a year old, I then had Car Play/Android Auto installed by the dealer shortly after, ~January 2021. So my car had 3 standard USB Ports by default (2 in centre console storage between seats, and one in the dashboard) and then one of the two centre ones was converted to the CP/AA Input when that unit was installed for me. So I don’t know if the upmarket models with it preinstalled at factory only had 1 port, or if all 3 of their ports would have been CP/AA enabled?
Also posted at BraxTech community here:
EDIT: P.S. Regarding point 2 above - I wonder if uninstalling Android Auto on the phone (or not enabling it in a fresh default iodéOS build) might get around this…? There is no way to tell if it is the CP/AA unit in the vehicle controlling the USB ports is arbitrarily the cause, or the fact it detects AA on the phone handset connected to the port, that triggers it to take control (or try to)?
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