Google, who have announced a number of new products and their plans for the future in their recent I/O developers conference have revealed that split-screen display will now be a standard feature for all users of their in-car Android Auto OS.

The feature was previously only exclusive to certain vehicles, but now, the highly useful split-screen functionality is now the default setting.

As stated by Rod Lopez, lead product manager at Android Auto, “We used to have a different screen mode that was available in a very limited amount of cars.”

“Now this is available no matter what type of display you have, what size, what form factor, and it’s a really, really exciting update.”

Google have revealed that the new update will conform to a variety of screen sizes and aspect ratios, in response to a wide variety of displays being fitted to cars, with luxury cars more and more adopting larger displays.

The massive screen featured in the new Tesla Model S Plaid.
Credit: TeslaMotorsClub

“We’ve seen some really interesting innovation from the industry, going to these very large portrait displays going into these extremely wide landscape displays,” says Lopez.

“And you know, the coolness is Android Auto will now support all of them, and will be able to adapt, giving you all of these features at your fingertips as a user.”

“That was part of the new motivation behind this redesign, was being able to adapt our product better to these vehicles that are coming out with these massive portrait displays, and massive widescreen displays.”

“And so our approach has been working really closely with these OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to make sure that things make sense and they work.”

Alongside this, Google have made a number of other changes and advancements, with standardized one-tap text replies and support for a wider range of streaming services.