v0.3.01-alpha

Gearslip 0.3.01 connects wirelessly on more phones and dongles.

Fixed

• Wireless works with dongles that send their Wi-Fi details before their address.
• A VPN no longer stops a wireless drive without a word. Gearslip tries the phone's ordinary route around it, and if the VPN still blocks the car, Gearslip says so. To fix it for good, exclude Gearslip in your VPN app.
• When Android won't ask for the Nearby devices permission, a button opens Gearslip's settings, where you can turn it on.

Changed

• An app that someone else has re-signed, such as a modified Waze, no longer shows the red X when it accepts Gearslip.
• The README lists Gearslip's signing certificate, so you can check your copy with AppVerifier.

Known issues

• Phone calls are unstable right now and may drop or fail to connect.

Full Changelog: v0.3.00-alpha...v0.3.01-alpha

v0.3.00-alpha

Gearslip 0.3 goes wireless, takes voice commands, and works with the car's rotary knob.

New

• Wireless Android Auto. Pair the phone with the car once, and leave the cable at home.
• Voice control, on the phone. Say "navigate to a gas station", "play" a song or artist, or open an app by name. Gearslip turns speech into text itself, so it needs no Google account. "Navigate to" picks the nearest place and stops at the map app's start screen.
• The rotary knob. The car's knob moves between buttons, so cars without a touchscreen work too.
• Music over Bluetooth or USB. Bluetooth plays as the phone normally would. USB has no delay but asks to share audio each drive. Gearslip offers to pair with the car the first time.
• Directions on the car. The car speaks each turn from your map app, and shows the directions on its own display where it can.
• Updates in the app. Gearslip finds new versions and installs them, with an optional beta channel.
• Button styles for the car screen, picked in the intro or the car's settings.

Fixed

• More cars play music over USB, including ones that refused Gearslip's audio before.
• Cars that give no screen size get a sharper picture, up to 1080p, and taps land where you press on cars that crop the edges.
• A new destination mid-route replaces the old route, and switching map apps ends the old app's route.
• Tidal's like and shuffle buttons show their real state.
• MapQuest finds your location.

Changed

• The app is half the size: 30 MB instead of 65.
• On GrapheneOS, Gearslip no longer needs exploit protection compatibility mode.
• The car warns you when the phone's location is off.
• Support Gearslip through Liberapay or Monero, in Settings.

Known issues

• Phone calls are unstable right now and may drop or fail to connect.
• Using voice commands to have Vela map to a location are only in the canary build currently.

What's Changed

• Recognize media templates and group them under Music by @iscle in #10
• Show app toasts on the projected car display by @iscle in #11
• Stop cleanly and ignore messages after handshake rejection by @iscle in #16

New Contributors

• @iscle made their first contribution in #10

Full Changelog: v0.2.00-alpha...v0.3.00-alpha

v0.2.00-alpha

Gearslip now leaves to your car's own screen, uses the car's microphone, and follows the car's night mode.

New

• Exit works on more cars. Exit takes you to the car's own screen, and the car's Android Auto button brings you back.
• The car's microphone. Voice replies and the assistant listen through the car's mic when it has one, so voice works with the phone in a pocket. Gearslip falls back to the phone's mic on cars without one.
• Night mode from the car. Maps turn dark when the car switches to night mode, instead of guessing from the clock.
• Type on the phone. When the car shows a keyboard, a passenger can type on the phone instead.
• Usage notes. You can choose to send short notes that show which cars work and where failing ones break. They hold no name, account, or location, and they're off unless you turn them on. The setup guide shows exactly what each note sends. Details are in the README.
• A new Settings screen on the phone, with What's new and the setup guide at the top.

Fixed

• A moving map no longer makes the car screen fall behind.
• Gearslip asks to send sound to the car as soon as you connect, so videos in the web browser play in the car too.
• A voice reply sends when its bar runs out, even over road noise or the radio. Say "cancel" or "change it" before then.
• Cars with more than one kind of music audio, such as the 2022 Dacia Jogger, play sound again.
• LIVI connects again, and touch works on cars with a second screen.

Changed

• Media search moved to Settings > Experimental features, since many apps ignore it.
• Settings > Media audio now offers Phone audio or Car audio.
• Logs leave out your location, the car's serial number, and its Bluetooth address, so they're safe to share in an issue.

Full Changelog: v0.1.10-alpha...v0.2.00-alpha

v0.1.10-alpha

Testing display negotiation for specific cars

What's Changed

• fix the drawing after coming back from the media menu to navigation app by @Brian5647 in #8

Full Changelog: v0.1.0-alpha...v0.1.10-test

What's Changed

• fix the drawing after coming back from the media menu to navigation app by @Brian5647 in #8

Full Changelog: v0.1.0-alpha...v0.1.10-alpha

v0.1.0-alpha

Buttons you can almost feel

Buttons now look like real keys. Choose Keycap, Tactile, or Flat under Settings > Theme.

Messages and voice

• Messaging apps such as Signal and Molly open to your recent chats.
• Gearslip reads a message aloud, and you reply by voice. Say "cancel" or "change it" before it sends, or tap a quick reply such as your arrival time.
• Voice works on any phone, GrapheneOS included. Gearslip turns speech into text itself, so it needs no Google account.
• New messages show as a small card at the top right, even while you drive. A bar shows how long until the card closes or the reply sends.
• Only messages, missed calls, alarms, and reminders pop up. Everything else waits on the dashboard.

Map

• The map stays loaded when you switch screens, so it no longer flashes black.
• Map apps draw more reliably and keep their connection when the phone is locked.
• The Home button shows your map app, so it no longer appears twice.
• The next turn shows in the nav bar when you leave the map.

Controls and settings

• Steering wheel buttons, control knobs, and D-pads now work.
• To see the whole song title and artist in the nav bar, choose Settings > Player in the nav bar > Song title.
• Choose miles or kilometres under Settings > Units.
• "Button style" is now called "Theme".
• Try the voice assistant and the vehicle data screen under Settings > Experimental features.
• Logs now say why a car ended the connection.

Known issues

• Spotify, Waze, and Google Messages updated to a version of Google's car library that only accepts Android Auto itself. Their own car screens won't open in Gearslip. Spotify still plays through the Gearslip player, which has the green check.
• Calls go through the car's Bluetooth, as they do in Android Auto. Pair your phone with the car to hear calls on its speakers.

Install

Download Gearslip-release.apk below and open it on your phone. It updates 0.0.05-alpha in place and keeps your settings.

Found a bug, or a car where the buttons don't work? Open an issue and share the log from the Logs screen in the phone app.

New Contributors

• @Brian5647 made their first contribution in #5 (Keep car apps online in the background and fix surface resizes)

0.0.05-alpha

Setup

• First run now asks for one permission at a time, each with its reason and an Allow or Skip button.
• Settings names the active certificate and removes it on request.
• A help screen replaces the old setup text on the home screen.

Car screen

• A phone app dials from a keypad or a searchable contacts list. It confirms before every call.
• The web browser now draws its own keyboard, so text fields work.
• The display-calibration screen is gone. It finished its job.

Media

• A new Now Playing tab scales to the screen instead of overflowing it.
• An Up Next tab shows the connected app's real queue.
• Browse and Lyrics keep the same control rail beside them.
• Waze and Google Messages are marked broken. Google's dialer, Assistant, and Android Auto entries no longer appear as tiles. Aardvark and Vivi Music are marked tested and working.

0.0.04-pre

Gearslip 0.0.04-pre

This release sends media audio to the car.

Gearslip captures whatever the phone plays as media and streams it to the head
unit's audio sink. The connection recovers from a head unit that never answers
the audio setup message, a fault this release traces to the 2018 Uconnect. The
driver switches media apps freely; a single grant covers the whole drive.

Two optional adb commands remove the two dialogs Android would otherwise show
each drive: one for audio capture, one for the notification-hiding that
Android 15 applies to any screen share, including this one. The setup screen
lists both commands and explains what each does.

The phone no longer plays music through its own speaker once the car is
connected; only the car does.

The README now explains why Gearslip's audio feature asks for a screen-share
permission it never uses for the screen.

0.0.03-pre

0.0.03-pre

This release is mostly polish on the car screen. Weather now sits next to the clock and opens into a forecast. The map buttons fade out when you stop touching the screen, and pinch to zoom now works, though I haven't tried it on a real head unit yet. Apps show their content in a small card over the map instead of a tall panel, so you see more map.

The home player has new Lyrics and Minimise buttons, and the launcher puts a green check on the apps I've tested: Musicolet, Organic Maps and OsmAnd.

Some apps still won't cooperate. Waze and Magic Earth only accept Google's own Android Auto, and Deezer and Oto Music keep their libraries private, so you can control playback but not browse. Gearslip now says so instead of showing an error.

On the phone, the home screen lists the setup steps in order, and a debug mode switch controls how much gets logged.

Typing into web pages doesn't work yet.

The APK is signed with the release key. Its SHA-256 is bd60714384d8acd158804adb4c403254cf246bbf326a44d32a8cd3eee3492d57. If you have a debug build installed, uninstall it first.

0.0.02-pre

Release v0.0.02-pre: car dashboard, nav bar rework, cached launcher

- Nav bar is icon-only and shorter, with a now-playing pill on non-home screens
- Clock opens a calendar and weather dashboard (adds READ_CALENDAR)
- Web page URL is now set from the car's Settings screen
- Launcher app scan and weather are cached
- Home player gains skip buttons and a larger cover

test release

preliminary testing.