I finally got Arc to work consistently when out and about and now all of a sudden on the bottom of the screen, Arc shows a message that says Unauthorized. And when clicking the settings button, I get the same message under “connections”. Uninstalling the Android App and reinstalling restored the connection but now when I search for Arists or Albums from Android Auto, using the the Letter shortcut on the left, 16 of 26 letters are greyed out. In other words more than half my library is inaccessible. Thanks.
To confirm, your only issue currently is with the screen setup via Android Auto? Do you have any special screen settings active on either the mobile device or AA itself? If you could also share a screenshot, that would be helpful.
With that, what make and model AA are you currently running in your vehicle? Are you able to check for any updates there?
I’d also see if clearing your AA cache may help - Go to Apps > Android Auto > Storage > Clear Cache. If the issue persists, consider clearing all data from the app (this will reset the app settings).
Hi Benjamin
Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delay. I can confirm that the standalone version of Arc on my android devices seems to be working fine. The issue is in fact in Android Auto. I’ve got no special screen settings set up in AA in the car. I’m driving a 2023 Genesis G80 Sport Plus with a Lexicon Sound System, which received an annual firmware update in early November - allowing the the system to go wireless AA. I cant compare Arc to the prior firmware as I’m a new ROON / ARC User.
I’ve cleared the cache and uninstalled / reinstalled ARC on the phone - same result. Everything present in ARC on Phone, half the search letters for Artists are greyed out on AA in the car.
I’m happy to send screenshots, just not sure what might be helpful… Please advise
The “Unauthorized” message most commonly indicates that the ARC instance has become dissociated from your RoonServer, either due to build mismatch, database refresh, or RoonServer reinstall. If you’re still seeing “Unauthorized” after reinstalling and logging in on your home WiFi, please let us know.
Concerning the Android Auto scrolling limitations:
Unfortunately, this is outside of ARC’s control. Android Auto head units limit the number of library objects the screen can display at any time; it’s a safety precaution to discourage scrolling during driving. Most head units impose a limitation of several hundred objects. Users with larger libraries will occasionally see part of their library clipped in the Android Auto browser after head unit firmware updates.
Development has a ticket to investigate further, but apps don’t have the ability to override head unit safety features in most cases.
Hey, Thanks for the reply!
The unauthorized message i was able to resolve by uninstalling / reinstalling ARC on the Android Phone.
Regarding the Android Auto. I understand what you’re saying about the scrolling safety limitations and the limits imposed by the head units. But that’s not the problem I’m experiencing. I’ve got PlexAmp, UAPP Pro and other audio apps installed, all of which are Android Auto Compatible like ARC. All of them, including ARC have a search feature for both Albums and Artists whereby, you can search by alphabet (not pulling up a list of all albums or all artists) when selecting to search by alphabet the 26 letters of the alphabet come up and one for symbols and another for numerals so that a grid of 28 or so square icons comes on the screen. It works the same in all these apps, then one only need to select a letter from the grid and all Artists or all albums beginning with that letter come up as a scrollable list - from that list, the AA Safety Scrolling Limitations kick in.
When using the ARC app in Android Auto, only 12 of the 26 Letters are functioning the other 14 are greyed out and inactive. But that’s not the case with the other apps. All letters and symbols are active. That’s what I’m trying to describe. I hope that makes sense. I dont think (or maybe it is) this is a head unit issue. For some reason when I select search by Letter or search by Alphabet - more than half the letters are inoperable with ARC only.
Are you by any chance able to share a few pictures of this behavior? You can upload them to the forum by using these instructions and they’d help clarify things, thanks and happy holidays!
Here are two pics of search by letter. The Top image is search by letter for Artist - Only 11 of 27 are available. The Lower image is search Albums by Letter where all letters are available to search except “X” which I guess means I dont have any albums the begin with the letter “X”
Thanks for staying with me, does this make it any clearer?
Thanks for getting back to me. Yes, I’ve got artists and albums beginning with every letter of the alphabet. My library is approx 4000 albums.
My phone is running the. Latest version of AA… My car I couldn’t tell, but it is a '23 and got a software update a, couple months ago that brought wireless connectivity to AA in addition to the previous wired only connection. I’ve tried ARC in this vehicle both wired and wireless with the same result
After discussion with the Arc team, we, unfortunately, aren’t able to do much at this time - Search falls completely onto the AA side of things, and Arc responds to AA’s offering of available items.
That said, the team did mention we could clean up the appearance here and potentially add clarity around this limit. We’ve pushed this up the chain of command and have a ticket in for improvement in this area.
I apologize in that we don’t have an immediate solution for you!
Android Auto, per manufacturer safety restrictions, will only display about ~400 objects on any given screen. In audio apps, this can restrict the number of objects in an alphabetical or date-ordered lists on certain screens that display the full library. This cutoff isn’t reflective of the library content - if you use voice search, you may be able to find content starting with the letters missing on the keyboard.
Apps themselves don’t have the ability to override these manufacturer safety features; these features are hard-baked in the operating system of the Android Auto head unit itself.
However, we’ve escalated the case to our product team - we will continue to explore options and workaround moving forward.
We’ll close this thread for now, but the ticket will retain the case notes internally and will continue to investigate. If there are any changes in a future release that affect this functionality, you should see them listed in Software Release Notes. Thanks!
