Send and receive messages with your car

You can send, receive, and listen to messages in your car with Google built-in. To use other messaging apps in your car, you can download more compatible apps from the Google Play store built into your car.

Important: Settings and functionality may vary by car manufacturer, region, and data plan. For more info, reference your owner’s manual.

What you need

Before you use message features in your car, make sure you have the following:

Important: Apps must support integration with Google Assistant in order to use voice commands. For more information, contact the app developer.

Message notifications

Message notifications will appear on your car screen when you receive them.

After the message notification disappears, you can find your missed messages in your car’s notification center, Messages app or other compatible apps, or as a tile on your car’s display.

Important: To receive message notifications on your car display, make sure you enable notifications for Google Assistant.

Get started

Send or reply to a message by voice

You can send and reply to your messages when you talk to Google Assistant in your car.
  1. Say "Hey Google" or tap the microphone .
  2. Say what you’d like to do.

You can say things like:

  • "Reply to [contact name]."
  • "Send a text to [phone number]."
  • "Message [contact name] with Facebook Messenger."
  • "Message [contact name] on Whatsapp."
After you say your message, Google Assistant will repeat it and confirm if you are ready to send it. You can say "Send," "Change message," or "Cancel."

Send a message with the display

To send a message with the Messages app:

  1. Select Messages .
  2. Tap New or select an existing conversation.
    • If you tap New to start a new message, select the contact name on your car display or say the name you want to message.
  3. Say your message.
After you say your message, Google Assistant will repeat it and confirm if you are ready to send it. You can say "Send," "Change message," or "Cancel."

To send a message with other compatible apps:

  1. On your display, tap the app launcher Apps.
  2. Select your favorite message app to browse and send messages.

Reply to a message with the display

  1. On your display, tap the message notification or tile, then tap Reply or the reply arrow .
  2. Talk to Google to create a custom reply.
After you say your message, Google Assistant will repeat it and confirm if you are ready to send it. You can say "Send," "Change message," or "Cancel."

Listen to a message

You can talk to Google to listen to your messages at any time. Say "Hey Google" or select the microphone to ask Google Assistant to read your messages to you.
If you receive message notifications on your car display, you can tap Play on incoming notifications to listen to them. You can also tap Play on missed messages found in your car’s notification center, messaging apps, or car display tile.

Mute messages

To mute the conversation, on the message notification, tap Mute conversation.

Add favorite contacts

Important: Favorites aren’t synced from your phone.
  1. On your car display, open the Phone app .
  2. Tap Favorites and then Add a favorite.
  3. Select a contact and tap Favorite .

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