Android Auto will now tell you if your USB cable is bad

Thanks to Android Auto’s latest 7.5.121104 update, you’ll now be told if you’re using a faulty USB cable while trying to connect your device to your car. 

As spotted by Esper senior technical editor Mishaal Rahman on Twitter, the latest version of the Android Auto app comes equipped with a USB Startup Diagnostic tool, which will, as the name suggests, test the USB cable’s quality to tell you if there’s a fault. 

According to Rahman, the new diagnostic tool, which can be found in the app’s settings under “connection help,” will test if Android can send data through the cable to the car, meaning you might need to use a specific USB port in the car for this tool to work correctly. 

With USB cables often varying wildly in quality, despite often looking identical to one another, it’s no surprise that dodgy USB cables are a frequent point of failure when using Android Auto, so hopefully, this new diagnostic tool will help alleviate some connectivity issues by pointing you towards the fault. 

Bad USB cables are frequently behind Android Auto issues, so in the latest version of the Android Auto app (7.5.121104), Google's adding a USB Startup Diagnostics tool. https://t.co/biu7BNMeoe pic.twitter.com/lEJNTTWfU4

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 16, 2022

Thankfully for those stuck without this feature and Android Auto’s 7.5.121104 update, Google has some recommendations to help maintain cable connectivity. In a support post, Google recommends only using a cable that’s under one meter (3 feet) in length and avoiding USB hubs or cable extensions. Google also suggests that you use the cable that came with your phone wherever possible, as that cable should be optimized for your device.