Painless Pandora post Entune Support (Android)

Sorry about the tiny pictures in the middle of the thread. They're in the right place, but probably too small to see. The full pics are at the bottom if you scroll down.

If you're an iPhone user, stop reading now and save 5 minutes of your time. I know nothing about iPhones and this likely won't work as Apple likes to have the final say in what you can do with the device you bought. It might be possible to replicate this on an iPhone but I really doubt it

I've been trying to figure out how to adapt to the decision to pull the Pandora app from Entune. It'll play through the bluetooth connection, but I hate getting my phone out of my pocket every time I hop in the truck. Here's what I did and I hope it helps.

First, you'll need an app called Tasker. You can get it from the Play Store for $2.99 and it has a ton of uses which make that price a steal. It's an amazing app that lets you set actions and triggers. I've used it forever to automatically turn my phone to vibrate when I'm at work, back to ringer when I leave, turn on WiFi when I'm home, back off when I leave, etc. Now, whenever it detects that my phone and my truck are paired by bluetooth, Tasker automatically opens Pandora which starts playing through the truck speakers on whatever channel I left it on the last time I used the app. No more digging around for my phone.

Setting up new tasks within Tasker is not intuitive. The main screen is below. The only two tabs you need to mess with are the Profiles and Tasks tabs. The one I set up for Pandora is called BT Connected TOYOTA Tacoma.



I find that it's easier to set up the tasks first. I set one up to automatically start Pandora. First, go to the tasks tab and click on the + sign at the bottom right to create a new task. You'll be prompted to name the task. Name it something obvious. I went with Auto Play.



Once you've named it, click the + sign on the following screen and you'll be prompted to select an action. App > Launch App > Pandora will create an action that starts the Pandora app whenever the task is initiated.

You'll need to create another task to stop Pandora once the phone is no longer paired with your truck. Follow the same steps lined out above except select Kill App instead of Launch app and then name it something obvious like Stop Play.

After doing this, you'll have two tasks that can be triggered by either the phone pairing or unpairing so it's time to set up the triggering event.

Go back to the Profiles tab and click the + sign at the bottom right to create a new profile. Choose State > Net > BT Connected to get to the screen shown below:



Type in a name in the name field (like Tacoma) then click on the magnifying glass symbol next to the Address field. You'll get a popup that will let you choose your device from a list. Pick whichever one is your truck.

You'll then be prompted to select a task to apply to your new trigger or 'profile.' It'll let you pick any tasks that you've already set up. I chose Auto Play as the triggered event. You'll see something like the picture below afterwards. Leaving it set up this way would successfully start Pandora on a successful pairing with your truck, but probably wouldn't stop the app when you turned your truck off. To do that, you should set up an Exit Task.



To set up an Exit Task, long press on the new profile that you set up and select Add Exit Task from the popup. You'll be presented again with a list of known tasks. Select the one that you set up to kill Pandora. Mine was Stop Play.

When you're all done, it should look something like this:



Now, restart your phone and you're good to go. When you get in your truck, you'll have tunes. When you get out of your truck, your phone won't keep blaring.

One other thing that really helps is to set your truck as a trusted device on your phone. This means that you won't have to unlock your phone if your phone is already paired with your truck. No fingerprint scanners, passcodes, etc. Just wake up the phone and you can use it. If your phone is mounted somewhere conspicuous you're only one button away from changing the station or doing anything else you need to do.

To add it as a trusted device, go into the system settings and choose Security & Location > Smart Lock > Trusted Devices > Add Trusted Device then choose your truck.

When all that is done, you're as close as you're ever going to get to the current Entune Pandora support.

A few disclaimers and other notes:

1. Unless you stop it, Pandora will be active and using data at all times when paired with your truck. You won't hear it if you are listening to another audio source but it will eat your data. I personally could care less since I have unlimited data, but be warned.

2. There's an option within Pandora for High Quality Audio. It does sound better and it's worth turning on if your data cap can spare it.

3. You won't be able change the channel or thumbs up/thumbs down songs while you're phone's in your pocket. Remember, you're driving. Don't be a dumbass.

4. You'll still be able to skip songs and change the volume from the steering wheel controls.

5. You'll have to select Bluetooth as the audio source... no kidding, right?

 

HFS. You should get a free set of wheels from Toyota. It is clear that they can't think outside of the box.

 

Just yell to your crotch really loud.

"Ok Google. Play Pandora"

Solved

 

If only it were that easy. I don't think that Google had Missouri hillbilly with a splash of growing up in Mississippi when they patterned voices. Even after going through the steps to make the phone better recognize my voice, Android never understands me.

 

Lol well done . Neat write up !

 

I used to be a pretty heavy tasker user, but have gotten out of it a little bit*.

But my Pandora app on android has a checkbox in the settings-->advanced that has a check box "Launch from car" that I assumes launches it when the phone detects it's connected to the truck. I don't have it checked, but there seems to always be a notification when my phone is connected to bluetooth that pandora can be launched (I have a pixel 2).

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* my biggest nerd thing was tasker was when I linked it to send me an gmail when I said "bus arrived" into my smartwatch. The email had the date and time. I then used IFTTT to take the info in the email (tagged based on gmail filters) and place the date/time in a drive spreadsheet that calculated the average school bus arrival time so that I didn't have to stand out there too early (it was habitually late).

 

Interesting. If that turns out to work, then I spent half an hour explaining my Rube Goldberg method for nothing. Oh well. It wouldn't be the first time

 

Considering that the menu item I mentioned has a note saying the notification will be there if checked, yet with it unchecked I still get the notification, I wouldn't bet on Pandora actually coded something like this that worked as intended.

 

quick aside... can tasker kill apps when the phone isn't rooted? I feel like a few years ago that was the case... but that was when I was doing all this on an Incredible or a Nexus.

 

I don't get any errors and Pandora doesn't show up as still running in the background. I'm not rooted.

Then again, I'm running a Nexus 6p so maybe I just ran out of RAM and it was shut down when I opened something else.

I used to use Tasker to reboot the phone every night. I know that I can't do that anymore since it's not rooted.

 

I used to do that exact same thing too... even linked it to only reboot at 3 am if I was on my home wifi.

 

You can do the same exact thing with Google smart setting for free. It'll open a specified app when you are connected to a specified Bluetooth connection.

 

Android Auto can launch Pandora as well.