Drive Assistant — Android App

The companion app for Drive Assistant — a small, round display for your car dashboard or bike handlebar. The app connects your phone to the display over Bluetooth Low Energy and sends it your Google Maps turn-by-turn navigation (maneuver icon, distance, street name) and your current music, so your phone can stay in your pocket with the screen off.

Want the display itself? The step-by-step guide is on the project website getdriveassistant.com; the firmware and technical details are in the firmware repository.

What the app does

• Reads the ongoing Google Maps navigation notification (with your permission) and forwards the maneuver icon, distance and street name to the display — about once per second, only when something changed.
• Mirrors the current media playback (title/artist) to the display's music screen and executes the display's buttons (play/pause, next, previous) on your phone's active player.
• Connects automatically when the display is switched on — even while the app is closed — and reconnects by itself after a drop. On Android 12+ the display is paired once as a companion device, so Android itself watches for it and starts the app. A small notification is shown only while the display is connected.
• Includes a test packet button so you can verify the connection before you drive.

Honest note: Google Maps has no official interface for navigation data, so the app interprets the Maps notification. This works well, but can depend on the Maps version and language — there is a debug mode to adapt it (see below). iOS is not supported.

Privacy

The app asks for notification access, and Android shows its general warning for that permission. What the app actually does with it:

• It processes only Google Maps notifications — anything from any other app is discarded immediately (see the package filter at the top of every callback in MapsNotificationListenerService.kt), plus the media playback state (title/artist) for the music screen.
• It has no internet permission (check AndroidManifest.xml) — it is technically unable to send anything anywhere. Your data goes exclusively over Bluetooth to your own display.

Don't take our word for it — the code is right here.

Install

Option A — download the APK (recommended)

1. On your phone, open the latest release and download DriveAssistant-<version>.apk.
2. Tap the downloaded file. Android asks whether to allow installs from this source (browser or Files app) — allow it, then tap Install.
3. Open Drive Assistant and follow the set-up steps below.

Updates: download the new APK and install it over the old one — your settings are kept. (All releases are signed with the same key.)

Option B — build it yourself

1. Install Android Studio.
2. Open this project folder (Open, not Import) and let the Gradle sync finish — the Gradle wrapper is completed automatically on first sync.
3. Connect your phone via USB (USB debugging enabled) and press Run ▶.

Requires Android 8 or newer.

Set up (on the phone)

The app guides you through three steps, each with a status indicator:

1. Allow notification access — needed to read the Google Maps navigation notification (and to see your media playback).
2. Switch on the display and pair it once — on Android 12+ the app shows the system dialog "Pair with Drive Assistant" (from 0.21). After that it connects automatically. If it doesn't, Search & connect does it manually. Use send test packet to check everything works.
3. Start navigating in Google Maps — the display comes alive.

Tips for reliable background operation:

• Exclude the app from battery optimization / allow autostart. Some phone brands (e.g. Xiaomi/HyperOS) restrict background apps aggressively — the in-app help dialog (ⓘ) covers the needed switches. On Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO phones the app detects a missing autostart permission and shows a button that opens the right settings page.
• The small "Drive Assistant active" notification (shown while the display is connected) is intentional — it keeps the system from stopping the app mid-drive. Lock the app in the recent-apps overview so "close all" doesn't end it; if that happens anyway, the app reconnects on its own.
• After switching Bluetooth off and on, open the app once so the automatic connection is armed again.
• Google Maps notifications must be enabled on your phone.

Adapting the parser (debug mode)

If a maneuver shows as wrong or "unknown" in your language:

1. DEBUG_DUMP = true (default) in MapsNotificationListenerService.kt logs the raw notification fields.
2. Filter Logcat for the tag MapsListener to see title, text, subText, bigText of the Maps notification.
3. Add matching keywords in NavParser.kt (detectManeuver / streetMarkers). Pull requests welcome!

The tag BleManager shows scan/connect/send status.

For developers

The app is a small Kotlin project (no external BLE libraries): a NotificationListenerService reads Maps and media sessions, NavParser maps notification text to maneuver tokens, and BleManager talks to the display. The BLE protocol is documented in the firmware repository: PROTOCOL.md.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Marius Pöhler.

This project is source-available under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0: you may use, modify and share it freely for personal and other noncommercial purposes. Commercial use requires a separate license — contact info@getdriveassistant.com.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. "Google Maps" is a trademark of Google LLC.