The car
Driving, it is voice and nothing else.
In development. The iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and Wear OS apps are in development and are not downloadable from the App Store or Google Play yet. This course teaches the app our test teams already use daily, which is the same one you will see on release day.
A dashboard has one rule and we did not write it: what you do while driving, you do with your voice. Everything that follows is built around that.
In CarPlay, three tabs
CarPlay has its own screen, with three lists and nothing more:
- Calls: who you need to call, with the reason under the name.
- Messages: unread client threads.
- Team: your internal Chat threads, kept separate on purpose.
Team sits apart from Messages for a practical reason: mixing a client asking about a house with your broker asking for a contract is exactly the mistake that gets you answering the wrong one.
Hot at the top, and a single signal
The queue splits in two: hot leads first, the rest after. And the only visual mark on the whole screen is the flame on a hot lead, precisely so it competes with nothing.
When what you are seeing came from the last download rather than right now, the time sits in the list header. In a car you cannot go investigate whether data is fresh, so it says so itself.
Tapping a thread does two different things
And it is worth knowing which, because there is no undoing it with your hands on the wheel. Tapping an unread thread has the assistant read it out loud. Tapping an already-read thread opens dictation to reply to that person.
Android Auto has no screen of its own, and that is fine
Android Auto does not let a work app draw its own screen: its templates are for navigation, parking, charging and points of interest. What the car does project is messaging notifications.
So that is where team and client messages go: the car reads them out loud with the sender's name and you reply by dictating. Less screen, exactly the same function.