STILL cannot turn off auto play music at startup

Yeah, as @Bob Comer, this is just about the only "feature" I like about Prime infotainment. Works great with an audiobook. I forget to put a bookmark on the app, but the car automatically starts the book where it was left off. And I listen to audiobook only in a car. Really, no sarcasm here.

 

That it plays random audio files from your phone when you get in the car?

 

That it autoplays, yes, but it's not random, I listen to audiobooks and 99% of the time it just takes up where it left off.

 

Some people like this feature, some people hate it. I’m one of those who hate it. So why not just provide an option in the car settings menu to turn off the feature?

 

As many have commented already, all you have to do to prevent Bluetooth starting when you start the car is to either turn off the AUDIO or switch to other SOURCE before you turn off the car. The Bluetooth picking up where it was left off is nothing different from USB audio picking up from where it was last left off or Radio starting on the same station last left off IMHO.

 

This has surprised my wife a few times. She gets into the car as a passenger and Van Halen comes out of the speakers when the Bluetooth picks up where it left off (from the last time I was in the car, alone). She's not a big Van Halen fan...

 

Salamander_King, the difference here is that the smartphone doesn't always continue where it left off. Depending on what you were doing before you get in your car, your phone OS might decide to close the podcast/music player of your preference. In the case of iPhones, this forces the iPhone to default to your iTunes music library when you start your car instead of your podcast or audiobook you were listening to.

Let's say you get home while listening to an audiobook, which you pause at that time. Then while home, you use Google Maps, browse the web, Facebook, chat, etc...., maybe you rebooted or updated your phone while home. Then next time you go in your vehicle, you start it up, and because you were doing other things in your phone, the iOS memory management has already closed your audiobook app. When your car sends the autoplay command to your phone, your phone no longer has the audiobook player in the background memory, so iOS has nothing to continue where it left off, therefore, it begins to play your iTunes library instead of continuing off the audiobook you were listening to. In my case, I don't use iTunes Music, so I only have like 5 songs there. The most annoying thing is that every time I start my car, it begins playing the same song, which I quickly have to pause while buckling my seatbelt and change to whatever I was really listening to the last time I got out of the car. Keep doing this for a full week and tell me you don't get sick of listening to the same song every time you start your car! This is totally NOT the same as starting on the same radio station last left.

I guess for now we have to remember to change the audio source before turning off the vehicle until Toyota gives us the option to turn off the annoying autoplay feature. The point is, we shouldn't have to do this, and the lack of the option to turn this off shows there was little thought involved in the creation of this feature. This has been an annoyance for years on all Toyota vehicles I've driven during this decade.

 

OK, I can see why you are frustrated now. I don't use my smartphone that is connected with my car for anything other than phone and audiobook listener. No music files on the phone. It is a Windows phone, so there is no more update. I do use it for other things often. Thus I have none of the problems you have described. But I don't think this is specific to Toyota. My Nissan Pathfinder BlueTooth autoplay behaves exactly the same way as my PRIME. Although I have not looked into the manual to see if the auto Bluetooth function can be turn off or not. What happens if you just delete those five songs you have in your i-Tune library? Then what would the system default to if it can not find the last played app and file?

 

I can see what you mean, but it rarely happens to me. If I know I closed my audiobook app, I always start it on my book again before I even go to the car, so it hasn't switched to something else in so long I didn't remember it could do that. It's not really the car that's the problem there, it's the phone, and perhaps one should research that angle in getting it to stop? I just googled the phone side of the problem, and I can't believe how much stuff is out there -- it appears to be a very common problem!

 

A few years ago, Apple began to allow streaming of the iTunes songs you owned but were only in the cloud. So now, they don't have to be in your smartphone local storage. Prior to that, I could do what you mentioned and delete the songs stored locally. Now, there's no escaping it because they just stream from the cloud.

I just don't see how this would be a phone problem given the fact that you can connect your iPhone to just about anything else, bluetooth speakers, headsets, docking stations, and it does not autoplay. Everything seems to indicate the car is commanding the phone to begin playback. Just for reference, this afternoon I was installing an aftermarket radio in my brother's car. It was a cheap chinese radio with touchscreen and bluetooth. I connected my iPhone to this radio via Bluetooth and it did not cause my phone to begin playback automatically when the car started. It connected automatically to my phone but it just remained there not playing anything until I decided to hit play. I wish Toyotas gave me the option to do the same. And I can see how this is not only a Toyota problem as manufacturers often share components and programming code to their vehicles. Not surprised this issue can happen on Nissans as well.

 

Some cars apparently let you turn it off, but not all, and the Prius/Prime aren't alone in not being able to turn it off. Think of how people use the radio, it autoplays too (if it was on, it is on the next time you start the car,) and that's probably the basis for bluetooth doing the same, car manufacturers expected people to want it the same. As for what plays when autoplay is started, that's all the phone OS, the car doesn't know anything about that.

 

So, I did little digging. The Bluetooth auto play feature on many car not just on Toyota behaves exactly the same. Apparently, the random playing of media upon connecting to a Bluetooth devise described by many in this thread is not a Toyota specific problem but is common among many car audio systems. It is the Bluetooth audio implementation problem. For those who using android phones, at least there seem to be a solution. I do use Android phone, but mine is not connected to my car, so I have never tested this procedure.

How to Disable Bluetooth Automatic Playback on any Android Phone

 

Yes, we agree that whatever begins to play is up to the smartphone OS and the car has no control there. The car radio basically sends a command over Bluetooth saying "Begin playback" and the smartphone just decides to play whatever it thinks is the right thing to play. If it remembers you were listening to an audiobook, it will do that, but if the OS memory management somehow removed that app from memory, it will default to its stock music app, which in iPhones is the iTunes music app. Of course, this is going to vary from phone to phone. Older phones with less RAM will more likely "forget" the last thing you were playing when trying to resume playback and it may resume playback to the stock music app on your phone.

The problem can be mitigated one of two ways: (1) Either the car can include an option to stop automatically sending the "Begin playback" command to the phone (most ideally), or (2) the phone OS can have an option to basically ignore the "Begin playback" command coming from external devices like car radios. I would never expect Android or iOS to ever include such an option since it is basically triggered by the car. So it seems more logical, in my view, that since car manufacturers are sending this command to smartphones, that they would provide an option to disable this. Perhaps Toyota has a way to provide feedback on their radio software and we can begin to provide our feedback and hope someday they will provide a much desired option. I can see that my Prius Prime has some desirable custom options that were not available in older cars, such as the ability to choose how to display incoming text messages and calls.

This behavior is not just annoying when starting the car. It can also be an annoyance when hanging up a call or even after having the car read a text message. Sometimes, I stop/pause the music from my phone while driving because I am having an conversation with someone in my car. Then a call comes in or a text msg comes in. After hanging up the call or having the car read the text msg, I would likely resume the conversation I was having. However, the car decides to resume playback which then I have to stop again so I can continue my conversation. I know I can just lower the volume, but if it is an audiobook or podcast, I like it to remain paused since I had it paused to prior to the call coming in. I recall my spouse owned a Venza 2015 and when playing YouTube videos, every time a Youtube video ended on the phone, the Venza forced the phone to play iTunes and the same song was coming up over and over automatically after every YouTube video ended. But it was worse: if the YouTube video paused to buffer for a second because of wireless signal conditions, the entire video got interrupted and iTunes started playing. Annoying as heck! LOL! There are a myriad of other circumstances why this feature is highly annoying.

I used to own a 2007 Avalon which has no Bluetooth, so I had installed a Bluetooth receiver connected to the car radio that takes calls and works beautifully. Simple device, no frills, but it just did the job right. It never assumed to begin playback every time the car started, and if music was paused and a call came in, it did not assume to resume music after hanging up the call. However, if the music was playing prior to the call coming in, the music paused during the call and resumed after hanging up the call as expected. If only car manufacturers made their radios behave that way, it would be ideal.

 

Reading through the nav manual of my 2017 PRIME, which I have never done because I have very little interest in infotainment system on my car. I found that there is the way to set the Bluetooth Automatic Connection ON/OFF. Also there is a way to set the auto connection to Device rather than default Vehicle. As I understand it, either turning off the Bluetooth Automatic Connection or selecting DEVICE for the connection method will make the connection manual, meaning each time you want Bluetooth to connect to the car, you have to manually connect it. Isn't this the closest thing to having an option to turn off the Bluetooth Autoplay feature?

 

Honestly, I prefer to simply change the source to FM or SAT. If you think about it, changing the Bluetooth connection to manual requires many more screen taps to reconnect, whereas changing the source is much simpler. Another option is to just turn off the radio.

 

LOL. That's exactly what I and others have been suggesting since the beginning of this thread. We now just made a complete circle.

 

I get the same unwanted auto play when I'm connected by wire, not just Bluetooth, registered trademark.

 

This seems to be a pretty long-life thread so I wanted to just throw in my quick work around. I already use an app (android) called 'Bluetooth Volume Control'. The main purpose of the app is to, per device you have, adjust the BT volume levels to the ones you saved in the settings each time the device connects.

For instance one set of headphones i have tend on the louder side so they get a 50% BT volume. The car i just max out so i can control the volume with the car controls.

Anyway, it also has a feature to autoplay on connect. Basically providing what people in this thread are trying to avoid. However, it does this by sending a button command on connect. You can set the command to be a play/pause button. So basically i have it press play/pause every time the phone connects to the car. Which basically overrides the car playing. Essentially the BT connects, the car presses play, then immediately after the app presses pause.

Its easier to setup then tasker and the app provides another reason for its use.

Obviously just an android fix and just a work around at that. No idea how it will work should/would/will/hopefully get android auto ...

-S

 

I got tired of this stupid cr*p. Here we have Google which makes a bazillion dollars a year and yet has no quality assurance department. So I just uninstalled YouTube music.