Android Auto could soon show navigation prompts right in front of your eyes

Taking your eyes off the road to look at your car’s infotainment screen while driving is a recipe for disaster, yet many of us still do it daily while following directions in Google Maps. Although some cars overcome this issue by bringing the navigation prompts within your line of sight, either through a heads-up display or on the screen behind your steering wheel, that’s not the case for the vast majority of the cars on the road today. Google seems aware of this shortcoming and is working on a new Android Auto feature to bring navigation prompts within your field of view, even if your car doesn’t have a heads-up display.

While sifting through the latest Android Auto release (version 14.2.151544), we came across two new strings hinting at the upcoming feature. The strings suggest that Android Auto could integrate with smart glasses to show navigation prompts within the driver’s field of view.

Although these strings don’t explicitly mention navigation support for smart glasses, the Hindi version of the “GLASSES_SETTING_TEXT” string provides confirmation. Instead of “Start navigation to launch Glasses,” the Hindi version translates to “To view navigation on smart glasses, start navigation.”

The feature appears to be in the early stages of development, so we’ll have to wait to see whether or not showing navigation prompts in smart glasses minimizes distractions. It doesn’t sound much less distracting than occasionally glancing at the infotainment screen, but it could be helpful if done right. We currently have no information on which smart glasses would support this feature. We’ll keep an eye on future Android Auto builds and update this post as soon as we have more details.