Anyone experiencing frustration with the 14inch infotainment?

[Dman1351]

Just purchased a 2024 Tacoma and I love everything about it except the infotainment system. It feels very clunky and cheap to cycle through media sources and apple car play. Using the “mode” button on the steering wheel requires me to cycle through Apple Music and Amazon music which I don’t use or ever plan to use (5 clicks to get from car play to xm) and if I don’t cycle fast enough it brings me to the trial screen for these two services. The Sirius xm station list is very hard to browse through and the only way I found to save favorite stations is to combine Sirius and fm stations together which is annoying. And on top of that when the truck is started remotely the apple car play needs to by manually synced to the car. I really think they missed the ball on the design and accessibility of this system and its really a shame considering that they put this huge screen in front of our faces that is totally annoying to operate. Is anyone else experiencing this or am I just being picky. I’ve used many multi media systems in other cars and this one is by far one of the worst.

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[Duck Amuck]

Just use the controls on the screen?

I do find the steering wheel controls less intuitive and useful than other vehicles, but in my opinion the on-screen controls are good enough I don't even notice. Although in fairness, I leave it on CarPlay 99% of the time.

 

[iResQ]

I agree. The mode button sucks and the favorites no picnic either. The interface could (should) be sooo much better. I also get an occasional failure for the cameras to come on. It's only happened a few times and a restart corrects, but still.

 

[Datrane01]

I use android auto primarily, but if it is on, I struggle to get to the menus outside of android auto. I can pretty much only use the mode button on the steering column to get out of android auto unless I disable it on the phone itself. And yes, I experienced the same frustrations with the favorites and such. My 10 year old hyundai has much more intuitive system. I'm sure they have improved it over time. But it was considered the best system at the time as well. But to be fair, Toyota is not the technology leader. They pride themselves on being reliable, which means technology needs to be lagging.

 

[Wags]

I have no issues with the screen using Carplay but that's all I use.

 

[Kielly]

I've very rarely ever had my android auto connect automatically, I don't have remote start (6M) I usually always have to manually connect and it's the most annoying thing about the truck if I'm being honest. Just crazy inconvenient

 

[bresna]

If you're running CarPlay (or Android Auto?), you can click on the black Toyota logo & it will bring up the main truck menus. Click on the music notes and it'll bring up the audio screen where you can select any audio source. It's two clicks, so not too much of a PIA but you're right that it's not very intuitive.

I've gotten used to this clunky interface since my wife got it with her 2023 Rav4 and I don't like it much. My wife's old 2017 Rav4 & my old 2020 Avalon was much easier to navigate.

 

[avp]

I use android auto primarily, but if it is on, I struggle to get to the menus outside of android auto. I can pretty much only use the mode button on the steering column to get out of android auto unless I disable it on the phone itself. And yes, I experienced the same frustrations with the favorites and such. My 10 year old hyundai has much more intuitive system. I'm sure they have improved it over time. But it was considered the best system at the time as well. But to be fair, Toyota is not the technology leader. They pride themselves on being reliable, which means technology needs to be lagging.

To get back to the native menu, I believe, from Android Auto, click Apps, then the Toyota App.

 

[Miqie]

I've very rarely ever had my android auto connect automatically, I don't have remote start (6M) I usually always have to manually connect and it's the most annoying thing about the truck if I'm being honest. Just crazy inconvenient

With my 3 year old phone, I could not get Android Auto to work at all, wireless or cable. Then I read that not all USB cords carry data, some are just for charging. I ordered a 4K USB cable and AA connects every time, now. I just need to figure out how to use AA and still get my AM/FM stations to work. I'm an AA newbie.

 

[Kielly]

With my 3 year old phone, I could not get Android Auto to work at all, wireless or cable. Then I read that not all USB cords carry data, some are just for charging. I ordered a 4K USB cable and AA connects every time, now. I just need to figure out how to use AA and still get my AM/FM stations to work. I'm an AA newbie.

I'm not 100% confident, but I do believe going into your apps on your android auto screen, and pressing the Toyota app you can change your source to FM/AM and still switch back to android auto to get your nav maps and what not. You may also be able to press the source/mode button on your steering wheel while in AA to listen to the radio.

I do know there is a way with other Toyota's, but I've yet to try it on the Tacoma as I'm not a big radio listener lol.

Worse case scenario find a radio app on your phone that's compatible with android auto and listen to it that way!

 

[Pootklopp]

I'm not 100% confident, but I do believe going into your apps on your android auto screen, and pressing the Toyota app you can change your source to FM/AM and still switch back to android auto to get your nav maps and what not. You may also be able to press the source/mode button on your steering wheel while in AA to listen to the radio.

I do know there is a way with other Toyota's, but I've yet to try it on the Tacoma as I'm not a big radio listener lol.

Worse case scenario find a radio app on your phone that's compatible with android auto and listen to it that way!

Yes, the source button on the wheel will switch between sources. Probably the quickest way of using the radio with AA. You can also set AA to not auto play music when connecting and I think that will keep the radio playing.

 

[brentbba]

I H8 android auto! My 11 year old Prius was more intuitive when it came to hands free calling. Seems like I can't use voice commands to make a call with android auto. I really only want android auto when I wantcto use GIAA gps software on my phone offroading. Otherwise android auto stinks!!!

Others have also mentioned not being able to split screen with the radio and map. Shoot, my son's 2022 Tacoma can do that! Bad step backward on that one Toyota!

 

[NoNo]

I'll post on this more as I get some time to read the manual and play with the system more, but I drove my truck home 400 miles today and I can say the infotainment system is one of the worst implementations I have seen on any vehicle ever! Sure I didn't read the manual yet, but I have never been so frustrated in my life trying to figure something out. My 2016 Chevy Colorado system was infinitely better, never read the manual and worked everything flawlessly the second I turned the system on.

Constantly having to go through the Amazon and XM screens on the Toyota, when I use neither, is incredibly annoying. Nothing about the system is intuitive, not the on screen controls or the steering wheel controls. One thing I ran into that hopefully can be fixed, whenever I change the volume via the control knob or the steering wheel controls, the volume changes but the source immediately switches. I couldn't use android auto the whole trip because any time I would try to change the volume, the source would change and then I'd have to jump through all the hoops to get back to whatever I was listening to on the phone.

For now I'll attribute it to not reading the manual, but seriously, I'm a tech guy and I've built computers without ever cracking open a manual. The system sucks, but hopefully they'll get things worked out with an update or two.

 

[MJ6805]

I have the same issue of changing the volume and it switching to something else. I tried playing music from my playlist in youtube while connected to Android Auto. It works fine until I try and change the volume and then it switches to the news Reuters. I like Android Auto for the maps and such but it's super annoying.

 

[NoNo]

I have the same issue of changing the volume and it switching to something else. I tried playing music from my playlist in youtube while connected to Android Auto. It works fine until I try and change the volume and then it switches to the news Reuters. I like Android Auto for the maps and such but it's super annoying.

Odd thing is the issue just went away after a few days with the vehicle. I didn't do anything so I kind of assumed it was some update that fixed the problem. The system is buggy. There are lots of things that seemed to change on their own after a while. My Amazon Music prompts eventually disappeared, SiriusXM stopped popping up all the time, I absolutely couldn't get the Toyota app to work but that just started working on it's own after a while. Very strange but after maybe the first week or two, everything started working fine and I did nothing that would have fixed any of the issues I was having.

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