• A major fix for Android Auto seems to be on the way
• It would allow alarms to be dismissed from the vehicle dashboard
• Users have been requesting this for years now

If you're an Android Auto user, you'll know that you can't dismiss alarms from the vehicle dashboard — you have to do it on your phone. It's a frustrating inconvenience, but one that Google is apparently getting around to doing something about.

The team at Android Authority has discovered that the ability to both snooze and stop alarms is hidden in the code for the latest version of Android Auto. These options will appear on the Android Auto screen when a phone is ringing.

As the report points out, it's been something users have requested for close to a decade at this point. It also feels like a basic function that really should've been added by now, considering everything else Android Auto is capable of.

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While alarms could be dismissed via a Google Assistant voice command, this isn't something that Gemini can do yet. The next-gen AI assistant is now rolling out to Android Auto users, but without being able to control alarms.

Still plenty of fixes to go

The newly discovered code isn't enabled yet, so it's not clear how long we'll have to wait before this goes live. However, the Android Authority team was able to manually activate it to bring up the on-screen options.

Reactions on Reddit to the appearance of this code have been most similar: there's a feeling that this shouldn't be difficult for Google to implement, and that there are lots of other Android Auto issues that also need addressing.

One poster says "it should not be hard" to add the functionality, while another is complaining about Android Auto "crashing every 10 mins" — an indication that the software experience isn't ideal for everyone at the moment.

At least the software engineers do seem to be hard at work on Android Auto: we've recently seen an issue with Do Not Disturb addressed, while navigation mode has also been given some useful EV upgrades.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.