Can we test Android Auto purely in emulators (2023)?

Question

This is the same as this question from 2016 (where the answer was basically: 'No'), but Android Auto since 2019 works very differently than it did 2016, so i think it is ok to ask again:

Android Auto basically gives you the ability to project app content to a car's head unit, and work with the input the user generates there. The DHU (Desktop Head Unit) is an emulator that lets a desktop computer emulate the behavior of a real head unit (for instance translating the workings of a physical dial to keyboard shortcuts, getting fake audio input from .wav files, etc) - The material that i read always assumes that you plug a phone with your app into the computer running the DHU. I would like to have it all on one computer - is it possible to connect a virtualized phone, running the app under test on the same computer as the DHU?

Answer 1

I managed to have a purely emulator-based android-auto env. It was... somehow painful but it worked.

In order:

• I installed desktop head unit emulator, latest available version was 2.0. sdkmanager 'extras;google;auto'
• I created an avd using the following system image: system-images;android-33;google_apis_playstore;x86_64.
• After launching that emulator I downloaded Android Auto apk from apkmirror. In particular, I used version 9.8 for x86_64:
• I installed that apk using adb install PATH_TO_FILE
• I enabled emulator's developer settings (by tapping several times on Settings -> About -> Build number)
• I went to Auto settings which are not available from apps menu. Under your emulator settings you have to go to "Connection Preferences" and then "Android Auto".
• Under those settings you need to enable Auto's developer mode by tapping several times on its System's version.
• Then you'll have available the option for starting the developer head unit settings, under the three dots menu on the top right of Android Auto's settings.
• After enabling that server you can follow the steps described on the "adb forwarding" part of the official docs about this, which are:
• forward adb ports: adb forward tcp:5277 tcp:5277
• Run dhu: $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/extras/google/auto/desktop-head-unit

Plus: if you are running linux and wayland you have to run dhu using xwayland, to do that you need to set an environmental variable before the previous step:

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11 $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/extras/google/auto/desktop-head-unit

Find below some print screens for helping finding things on emulator and the final victorius, glorious and spectacular dhu finally running: