Wireless Android Auto Lossless Bug

[luphiro]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Galaxy s23+

Operating System

Android 16

My Question or Issue

I have set my cellular streaming quality to "very high" and my Wi-Fi streaming quality to "lossless".

However, when I'm connected to my cars headunit via wireless Android Auto (which uses wifi) a lot of the times songs will have the "lossless" badge. I also haven't downloaded those songs.

It would be nice, if this could be fixed so that drives in my car don't run down my cellular plan.

[Eni]

Hey there @luphiro, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this and welcome to the Community! 

Based on what you mentioned, the app might detect the connection between your phone and the car's head unit as Wi-Fi, so it automatically switches to your Wi-Fi streaming quality setting instead of the cellular streaming quality. 

In this case, to avoid high data usage while driving, you can try downloading your content ahead of time time to listen offline or lowering the Wi-Fi streaming quality in the app settings. 

If you prefer, you can also disable Lossless quality temporarily when connected to Android Auto. 

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us as it helps improve the overall user experience. 

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you. 

[SmXtrem]

Hello,

it would be nice if we had a separate setting for Android auto quality or at least if we can change the audio quality when the phone is roaming. (nationaly i have unlimited data plan)

[MihailY]

Hey @SmXtrem and @luphiro,

Apologies for the confusion here.

The streaming quality in Android Auto should reflect what you've set up in the app settings on the phone connected to the car. 

If you're seeing the Lossless badge on some songs when playing them through the head unit, this likely means that the tracks have already been streamed in Lossless quality when connected to your WiFi and are now stored in your Spotify app's cache and are also available in your Offline Backup playlist (you can find it through Search). 

The tracks from this playlist haven't been downloaded explicitly but are still available offline and are played without using mobile/WiFi data. As explained here, the song files that were already cached in a higher quality will be preferred during playback until the cache is updated or cleared.

I've personally checked this and can confirm that when connected to Android Auto, any tracks which are available in Lossless quality and that I haven't streamed before played in the quality setting that I've chosen for Cellular streaming on my phone.

Hope this clears things up! If the behavior differs on your end, please let me know so I can investigate further.

Cheers,