In this day of modern always-connected smartphones, it’s fair to say that the built-in navigation systems in most cars have become passé. After all, Google Maps can provide so much more detailed and current information on where you want to go, plus reliable and up-to-the-minute traffic information sourced from hundreds of drivers along your route.
While you can still prop up your smartphone with a car mount, many modern vehicles offer an even better way to stay on top of everything with Android Auto. This lets you tuck your phone away safely and use a more intuitive interface that’s geared toward in-car use — and typically presented on a much larger screen.
Unfortunately, as fantastic as Android Auto is, the significant drawback is that many cars still require you to plug your phone in to use it. Only higher-end vehicles and trims support wireless Android Auto, since Bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth to mirror your screen; your car needs to have built-in Wi-Fi.
However, if your car supports wired Android Auto but doesn’t have its own Wi-Fi system, all hope is not lost. The demand for an untethered Android Auto experience has resulted in a vibrant ecosystem of accessories that can get the job done by providing a bridge between the USB port on your car and the Wi-Fi on your smartphone. We’ve tested the best of the bunch and rounded up our findings below.
Our favorite pick among wireless Android Auto adapters is AAWireless, an eponymous accessory from a Dutch company that’s the most versatile and compatible option on the market right now. It’s about the same weight and size as a dental floss container, but thanks to its powerful companion app it packs in everything you need to get wireless Android Auto working flawlessly on nearly any vehicle.
The box contains a six-inch USB-A to USB-C cable that should work with most vehicles; however, you can swap that out for any USB-C cable that works for your car, including a longer one if you prefer to tuck the dongle away somewhere else in your vehicle. Range won’t be a problem since it works over Wi-Fi.
It supports Bluetooth 4.2 and dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi; Bluetooth for the initial setup and 5GHz Wi-Fi for Android Auto connectivity. We found its connectivity was completely flawless, and you’ll have no problems with range — while testing it for our review, we drove a block away from home before it disconnected, and we realized we’d left our phone on the dining room table.
Unlike most Android Auto adapters, AAWireless includes a companion app on the Play Store that walks you through the setup process and provides a wealth of advanced configuration and customization options you won’t find on other adapters. This even includes specific settings to solve compatibility issues with certain vehicles, as well as options to tweak the experience to match your in-car display and how your vehicle’s USB ports work.
AAWireless also has a proven track record when it comes to releasing firmware updates that not only fix compatibility problems but also add new features — the company is even beta-testing an update that adds CarPlay for iPhone users, which will come in a future firmware update for all existing customers.
While it doesn’t come cheap, Carlinkit’s AI Box Max goes the extra mile, bringing not only wireless Android Auto support to your vehicle, but an entire Android-powered entertainment system. With an embedded Android 13 operating system powered by an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon QCM 6125 chip, the AI Box Max lets you stream YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu, listen to Spotify, and even play games on your car’s infotainment system.
While you’ll obviously want to avoid doing most of these things while driving — it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law — it can still be a useful way to entertain kids in the backseat or enjoy your favorite flicks while you’re waiting to pick them up from school or out on a family camping trip. In addition to the collection of preinstalled apps, you can also install nearly anything else from the Play Store, letting you do things on your dashboard well beyond what Android Auto is capable of on its own.
A built-in 4G modem lets you add your own SIM card to stream on the go, or you can connect to your phone’s mobile hotspot over Wi-Fi; there’s also 128GB of internal storage to load up your own apps and content. The downside is that we found this one takes a few more seconds to start up than most other Android auto adapters — around 30 seconds from the time you start your car or plug it in, plus another 30 seconds for Android Auto to kick in with your phone. Still, that’s hardly a dealbreaker considering everything else this little box offers.
While the AI Box Max supports both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, in a rather odd twist, it converts everything to the CarPlay protocol. That can be a good thing if you have a car that supports wired CarPlay but not Android Auto, but it does mean you’ll get a slightly different user experience compared to a native Android Auto system. We also found a bit of lag in the conversion compared to dedicated Android Auto adapters. However, that may be worth the trade-off for a device that works as a more full-featured Android entertainment system — and frankly, there’s enough functionality packed in here that you may decide to use the device on its own and forego the Android Auto connection entirely.
Motorola’s MA1 was one of the earliest Android Auto adapters available from a more well-known company, and it was so popular that it was hard to get your hands on one for the first few months after it launched. This wasn’t just because of the Motorola branding but also the fact that it was designed in collaboration with Google, giving customers even more confidence in its reliability and compatibility.
That wasn’t an empty promise, as the MA1 works surprisingly well on a broad range of cars and offers a plug-and-play setup with no additional apps to download. Just pair your car with Android Auto over a wired connection, swap it out for the MA1, pair it up over Bluetooth, and you’re good to go.
It should work on most cars, but there are some that are known to be incompatible, such as Mitsubishi, so like any adapter on this list, it’s important to do your homework before making a purchase. The USB-A cable is also non-removable, so you may need to factor in a USB extension cable or a USB-C adapter, depending on your make and model of car and where you want to connect it.
While the Motorola MA1 is one of the easiest devices to use with broad compatibility, there’s not much you can do if you run into problems with your vehicle, as there’s no app to tweak the configuration or update the firmware. It’s also not as smooth at handling multiple smartphones when they’re both in the car at the same time since there’s no way to control which one it connects to. There’s a button that sometimes — but not always — works to switch to the other paired phone, but it’s easier to have the person who doesn’t want to use it switch off Bluetooth to avoid this.
Still, as long as it works with your vehicle, and you don’t have to deal with multiple phones regularly, it’s one of the simplest and most reliable wireless Android Auto Adapters you can buy.
While Carlinkit’s AI Box provides a full entertainment system, the company also makes a more straightforward adapter in the Carlinkit 5.0. This device is ideal for folks who share a car with family members who aren’t on Team Android, as it can not only bridge wired Android Auto to your Android phone but also do the same with CarPlay for iPhone users.
Unlike Carlinkit’s older adapters, this provides a native Android Auto experience on your dashboard rather than trying to squeeze the Android UI into an Apple CarPlay interface — so there’s no added lag. This does mean your car will need to support wired Android Auto, but that’s become much more common on vehicles released in the past few years. The package also comes with detachable USB-A and USB-C cables and is compact enough to stow away in your center console if you have an appropriate USB port there.
Sadly, while Carlinkit offers a companion app, it’s not available on the Play Store, so you’ll have to resort to downloading the APK and sideloading it if you want to use it. Thankfully, the app isn’t strictly necessary, as the adapter boasts broad compatibility. We found a firmware update was needed on our review unit before we could get connected to our car, but this can be done through your mobile browser. However, the documentation is sparse, so you’ll likely find yourself visiting the support site to figure it out.
Finding the right Android Auto adapter can be tricky if you share a car with someone. Most adapters work best for cars with only one driver — or at least only one driver who wants to use Android Auto — and can get confused when both paired smartphones are in the car at the same time.
While you can normally solve this by turning off Bluetooth on whichever phone you don’t want to connect, that’s a kludgy workaround. Thankfully, that’s not necessary with Carsifi, as this adapter provides a customizable “magic button” that can be used to switch between the last two paired phones with a click or two.
The button can be customized through the Carsifi companion app, where you can also set it to pause and resume Android Auto with a different number of clicks. The app also provides firmware updates when they’re available and lets you change things like screen DPI and how Android Auto starts up when it first connects.
The only catch is that, at the time of writing, the Carsifi app hasn’t been updated for Android 14. Hopefully, the company will do that soon, but in the meantime, it should work fine on devices running older versions of Android. We found the Carsifi worked fine in our testing, even switching between two phones without the need for the app installed on either. However, the lack of support or any recent firmware updates make it a slightly risky buy, so make sure you buy it from somewhere with a good return policy in case it doesn’t work with your car.
The compact design of the AACPlay lets you tuck it away anywhere, with removable USB-A and USB-C cables to match it up to whatever ports your vehicle has. It even comes with a gel pad to help you secure it in your car.
For the most part, this is a plug-and-play device that just works, although there’s no companion app or upgradeable firmware, so your mileage will vary depending on your vehicle. Fortunately, AACPlay provides a comprehensive list of the vehicles the adapter has been tested with. However, while it will work with everyone on that list, not all are equal when it comes to performance; for example, we’ve seen reports of startup times ranging between one and 20 seconds depending on the vehicle.
Nevertheless, it’s a simple and affordable device that will get the job done if your car is compatible. However, if you’re looking for something that will let you tweak configuration options or handle multiple phones, you’ll probably want to consider spending a bit more to get a more versatile adapter.
In an ideal world, every vehicle would have wireless Android Auto support built right in. However, it will likely be years before that happens. Carmakers aren’t merely being stingy by excluding wireless support for Android Auto; rather, it requires that the vehicle be equipped with not only Bluetooth but also Wi-Fi — hardware that’s usually limited to higher-end trims.
Thankfully, wireless Android Auto adapters are here to bridge that gap by providing the necessary Wi-Fi interface into your car’s USB port. However, it’s important to remember that these adapters can’t bring Android Auto to a car that doesn’t already have it; they merely turn a wired Android Auto connection into an untethered one for your phone.
Some, like Carlinkit’s adapters, can convert Android Auto into a CarPlay connection for vehicles that only support Apple’s solution, but this is an imperfect scenario at best as it introduces a fair bit of lag into the process. Since CarPlay had a head start, these may be useful for older cars — most commonly 2015-2018 model years — but fortunately, most vehicles released since then support at least wired Android Auto and CarPlay.
While there are some more affordable options available for those who just want the basics, the best of the bunch by far is the AAWireless adapter, which includes a companion app that lets you tweak the experience for your specific car, but even includes workarounds for the idiosyncrasies of some vehicle infotainment systems. AAWireless also has a proven track record of releasing timely firmware updates to address bugs and incompatibilities and even add new features.
For a more plug-and-play solution, Motorola’s MA1 is also a great choice. There’s no companion app — and no upgradeable firmware — but it was designed in collaboration with Google, making it one of the most compatible Android Auto adapters on the market, at least from the phone side. The wide variety of vehicle systems out there means it won’t work everywhere, but it’s one of the most compatible options right out of the box, which means you generally can’t go wrong.
Nevertheless, we recommend doing some research before investing in a wireless Android Auto adapter—or at least making sure the place you’re buying it from has a good return policy. With hundreds of different carmakers, models, years, and in-car systems out there, there’s no guarantee that every adapter will be compatible with every model of car.
Maybe if we start telling people the brain is an app they will start using it!
