USB thumb drive music - top of list after timeout ? ETA: "Browse While Driving" issue

So, trying to see if there's any hidden tricks working with a specific little "feature" in the OEM head unit or truck itself on a new (only weeks old!) TRD OR.

I have 128g thumb drives with about 700 album folders (all now on the root) with about 7000 MP3 songs dispersed throughout those folders. FAT32 format since forever. Should meet functional criteria. These drives had worked fine with a 2013 TRD OR the whole time, I never had it reset itself to the top of the folder list no matter how long the truck sat. It even worked basically in real time searching from power up through the multi-level tree that they used be styled with. New HU takes a good long moment to catch up every time at power up in order to be able to search even with only root-level folders (different gripe)

My issue - after driving for a while and getting somewhere in an album / song I would then power the radio and vehicle down as normal. If sometime in the relatively near future I drive again, after the "catch up" time at power on it will restart where the album / song left off. What I am finding is if the vehicle is off for a couple days the HU defaults back to Folder 1 / Song 1, ie top of the whole list.

Why can't it keep its place? Does the USB port fully power off only after a few days, and this causes the HU to not remember things? HU itself has a buried timeout? Anyone else annoyed by this and know hidden tricks in the HU (or other method) to get around this? Or just stuck and live with it?

NOT looking to swap in a different HU or add more hardware just to get this to work, so don't suggest that please. I know this isn't a soul-crushing issue, but for cripes sake coming off of 15 year old tech that handled it fine just makes me feel like I'm getting an anus scraping with a mummified caterpillar every time I think about this...

Thanks in advance for any direction... or cry-baby blastings

 

i have a 2016 and thinking of getting a 2023 and am bumed we can no longer upload pic's to the head unit.
now this, i also pay all music from USB stick.

 

Actually my other gripe mentioned above is more of a pain in conjunction with the main issue above. If it would start playing immediately on power up but still reset at the top of the list, I wouldn't like it like that yet but at least would be more tolerable. Once all the files are indexed searching is ok - you can "slide" through the whole list like in a file explorer window instead of just jumping one folder at a time with the arrows. You could start listening immediately.... but noooooooooooooooooooo, reindexing is a must apparently.

The fact that you have to wait an amount of time seemingly dependent on the amount of total files you have and the tree structure is a pain. EVERY DAMN TIME YOU START THE TRUCK. Like minutes - when I used the drive with the old structure, it would take 6 to 8 minutes to catch up. It had sometimes 3 or 4 folders deep and varied from group to group.... because it worked perfect before.

If you do get new and have lots of songs, I would highly recommend putting everything at the same shallow tree level. Seemed to cut the startup time down by 70 or 80 percent for me with my amount of songs. Example of how I moved things -

Root > Flogging Molly Album 1 (folder)
(under that folder) >Song1
>Song2.... etc

Root > Flogging Molly Album 2 (folder)
(under that folder) >Song1
>Song2.... etc
No deeper!

I tend to now do multiple trips in one day, then it sits for a few days. So during my "one day" I get the constant re-indexing when restarting the truck but then eventually plays where I was at. If it sits, it starts from scratch on both fronts. This is just so cheesy. I was hoping others may have been annoyed enough too and found out interesting tidbits to work with.

I hate to sound like I'm making a big deal out of possibly something small, but I used to commute a heck of a lot and music in the vehicle was / is important to me. Just seems like ugly UI, especially considering their big bad manual states "don't play with your fancy touchscreen and all its functions while driving".

 

your not making a big deal out of this, every time you get in you truck you have to start from song 1, that sucks.

 

I’m surprised the head unit does anything at all when you plug in a usb storage device. Is this a common feature?

My guess is that you were previously using a feature that was deemed not important in newer versions of the software, but that’s just a guess.

Have you tried to transfer the music to your phone use a music app of some sort?

 

Yes, a spot on the screen shows a pic of USB stick and touch it and it will play MP3's from the stick.
also a USB stick is how you upload JPEG pic's to appear on the screen.

 

No snarks intended, I do really appreciate any help trying to get something on this apparently fairly niche topic -
Yes, as KB also said above it is intended to be able to use a stick meeting criteria set out in the user manual. To me with engineering in my blood, level of perceived importance by uninterested far-upstream design lackies should not affect performance. Again as with most things now, it worked fine before why is it worse?....

I won't go the phone route for two reasons - 1 my current little-used phone doesn't have anywhere near the capacity for the total gig I would need for everything (my 7000 songs stated in the original post wouldn't fit and isn't even everything I have, just what I normally want on my main stick disc). 2 using the phone will require me to be plugging / unplugging / re-syncing(?) when getting in and out of the truck. I want to just leave the thumb drive currently in rotation in the dash USB pretty much permanently and not interact with yet another piece of portable hardware I may not have on me at all times. I usually don't even have the phone with me unless going on drives over an hour away... or talking long distance with my sister who...knows how to talk


And, haha, this morning I finally did some non-tacomaworld searching (blasphemy!) but ended up on toyotanation (so kinda ok!). Couple older posts on corollas and such with similar issues of long indexing / every time scenarios. Seemingly like it's inherant in the newer design with no good workaround.

Sucks / shrugs at this point I think. Hopefully this will be my biggest complaint I can come up with for quite a few years on this new vehicle (besides being overpriced, short-changed on AT and rear diff fluid, rust on spots with a vehicle new enough to still have the plastic wrap on it when purchased, etc.... )

 

we think alike, my excuse is that i am 78, LOL
we are a minority.

 

As a software engineer, I am not surprised that a feature would work differently or not at all in a newer version of software. I also know that it can be frustrating when a feature I think is important is removed or broken in a software update. As software evolves, there is often a prioritization of which features to keep and which to let die, because there is a cost to maintain a feature after it is implemented. At the very least, it needs to be re-tested after a change to the software.

 

gudu,
Thanks. Yeah I agree with what you said and also know where you're coming from. After spending quite a few years as an electronic tech, then systems tech, I ended up the last 6 years or so of work doing final release software validation testing on high end medical research equipment. Had embedded sw as well as working with MS computers as the user interface. Well aware of the scenarios like "hey here's a new excel release to crap on the next two months of your life"

Your words made me thing too that part of my beef is they don't tell you enough of what changes sometimes occur, like in my case the delays / resetting. At least if they'd mention it we wouldn't have to be picking on things wondering if there's an actual issue somewhere. Too much "paperwork trail" action stuck in my head yet, sure you probably have a lot of that to deal with also...

Otherwise we could then be like the "others" and go back to arguing over the usual -
- Can I fit 47" tires without rubbing
- My edges of my brake light housing isn't blacked out enough
- Should I change my blinker fluid at 1k, 5k, or 10k



Meh, at least maybe someone else questioning this will find my thread and know it's just the way it is...

 

Yeah, definitely minority any more! Never needed a mobile the first 30 years of life, ignored it for the most part the last 30 or so.
Get your heads out of your phones and enjoy real life!
Me -
- Give me a truck that goes into the woods when I hit the gas
- Give me my music that I control
- Give me a straight line from my guitar into the amp with no effects, crank to 11

At least the last one I can control

 

So, F-tards and beeotches. Coming back to this, as I had ignored it all for a while but now found something out. May not be able to do anything but at least if others search for similar maybe it could help ID. I may pester a dealer if I ever go back to one to see if they can change.

First off - the reset to first album / first song after a substantial time off has apparently gone away on its own. Don't know or care why any more. SW update or something after a few weeks of being on-line? It now seems to always remember where its been.

Second - the ongoing issue has then been not being able to search USB with the Browse button. When I first noticed it working / not working intermittently, I wasn't getting enough of a pattern to identify what the issue was because I was not driving a lot along the way. I have also since seen a similar complaint on both a 4R and Tundra forums. 4R offered nothing, Tundra suggested some additional piece of something. But at least it wasn't just me...

Third - what I found is that when I could get Browse to work it was when I was parked. I only thought it was with the truck actually off and just in ACC using the radio, then when I started the truck Browse went away. But, what I didn't notice is that after I started the truck, if I left it in park eventually the Browse worked once things settled. IT GOES AWAY once you get into Drive.... quickly but not right away... blah as this is what got me.

So I would see it work parked, see it work if I caught it in the first few seconds after going to Drive, then it went away. Also Browse seems to come back if still running and going into Neutral as well as eventually when stopping and going to Park with the truck still running. But ALWAYS works if just truck off / ACC mode.

Appears to be a Vehicle In Motion type of setting, but couldn't find anything available to me in the HU to chage. PITA cause I like to change what I'm listening to along the way, but can't search while not completely set to Park for a time.


If anyone ever sees similar, it's probably this, and not just on Tacos. Also, is anyone on the Toyota team here ---- can this be changed at a dealer, or no such setting / hard coded?

Thanks and good luck with this world ending issue

 

Hey, if any Mods are seeing this feel free to move the whole thread to the audio sub forum for reference. Not sure why I started here in 3rd iniitally, probably just too annoyed to think clear and unconsciously blocked out the other subs I usually never go into lol