If you use Android Auto for phone screens in your car,
then you will probably have seen this warning that Android
Auto for phone screens will stop working soon.
The good news is that Google offers similar functionality with Google
Assistant's Driving Mode.
This video will show you how to set up Assistant's Driving
Mode in both Android 9 Pie and Android 11.
In all versions of Android, you can access
Assistant's settings from Google Maps.
Tap on your Google profile picture
at the top right of the screen and then "Settings".
Select "Navigation settings".
The next tap is Google Assistant Settings.
However, it's at this point the Android 9 and Android
11 have significant difference in the Assistant's settings.
So let's first tap on Google Assistant settings in Android 11
on the left of the screen.
Tapping on this gets you straight into Driving mode settings.
If you tap on Google Assistant settings in Android 9 Pie
on the right of the screen, you access all your Assistant settings.
It does not jump direct to the Driving mode settings
with Android 9 tap on "You",
which gives you access to your information and personal preferences.
Then tap Transport.
When I first started testing this before making this video, I was just getting
the sections, "Your places", "Getting around" and "Notifications".
However, at some point, "Driving mode"
suddenly appeared at the bottom of the screen.
I don't know what I did to make this appear,
or maybe even Assistant was updated in the background.
I can only suggest that
if you do not have Driving mode at the bottom of this setup screen ...
keep trying and hopefully it will appear.
So tap on Driving mode.
And now both Android 11 on the left and Android 9 on the right
are now on the Driving mode setup screen.
Android 11 gives you a lot more control over how to launch driving mode.
My personal setup is that I want Driving mode to launch when I'm navigating
in Google Maps and also when connected to the car's Bluetooth.
With Android 9, you only get a simple toggle driving mode on or off.
So I turn driving mode on.
The General section only has one setting for Hey Google detection.
For my devices, I want Android 9 to respond to Hey Google
but I don't want my Android 11 device to respond to Hey Google.
So I set the toggle for Google detection as I require.
Set Hey Google detection as you require in your situation.
If you have got Hey Google detection off, then you also have the option to set
Hey Google detection to on when you are driving.
If on the other hand, you have Hey Google detection enabled,
then while driving must also be on by definition,
therefore it's greyed out.
If you want to use Assistant Driving mode, then I think you should set
"While driving" to On, as I've got for Android 11.
Or Hey Google set to On all the time as I've got setup in Android 9,
Return to the Driving mode settings, at the bottom of the screen
in the Calls and Messages section, I guess that most people
will want to enable both "Allow incoming calls while driving"
and also "Get messaging help while driving".
However, you may find, like I did, that
the "Get messaging help while driving" is disabled.
Tap the toggle to enable it
and you will be asked to allow notification access for Google.
Tap allow access and you will jump to Settings
where you can then allow access to notifications for Google.
Return to the Driving mode
settings and enable "Get messaging help when driving" again.
This time you will get a message
at the bottom of the screen that says the update was successful
To start Assistant Driving mode, whatever automatic launch settings
you've set in Android 11 will start Driving mode,
but in Android 9 you will need to start Driving mode manually.
Launching manually will also work in Android 11.
So to start it manually say "Hey, Google" ...
"Driving mode".
In Android 9 Driving mode simply starts Google Maps.
However, in Android 11, a new user
interface is opened, which is designed for use in a car.
I hope that Android 9 will eventually be upgraded to use this new UI
so that Android 9
will also have a good replacement for Android Auto for phone screens.