lipappy

I have a 2012 ES 350 and I have paired my Samsung s4 smartphone to it. I hear phone calls through the car speakers but I was wondering if there's a way to hear the voice that navigates you with Google maps through the car speakers as well. The car's own navigation is so poor I don't even use it. Thanks!

islandbeef

Since it's already paired, you're half way there. In your Google maps app, when you begin your route you'll have the option to choose where the turn-by-turn voice will be coming from? Select either phone speakers or "Car Multimedia" (your Lexus bluetooth speakers). Choose "Car Multimedia", you'll be hearing the turn-by-turn over the speakers (hopefully).

Hope this helps.

lipappy

Hmm... when my route starts it does not offer me that option. I tried to find something like that in the settings of google maps, but didn't find anything.

islandbeef

I did some digging found this discussion "work-around" with your phone and a Toyota Sienna bluetooth:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/sam...h-enabled.html

"This solution worked for me. It was supplied by a member called "beesee". In my Toyota when I went to settings - bluetooth I found MULTIMEDIA as a Paired Device. Its obviously named different in each car. Following is the solution from user "beesee" that worked for me.

"By trial and error I finally fixed the problem. I went to my phone's Settings > Bluetooth and found SYNC as a Paired Device. I tapped on the gear icon to the right of the word SYNC and noticed both the Call audio and Media audio Profiles were checked.

I unchecked Media audio and now I can still make calls and play my iPod through voice commands using Sync Bluetooth AND I can also hear Navigation voice directions through my phone speakers.

With this method I cannot stream audio from my phone to my car's speakers but I never did that anyway."

lipappy

I tried that, and got it to work however with a huge caveat, that makes it still not very good. The only way to hear the navigation is to switch the audio mode to BT (for bluetooth). That would be ok, except for the most annoying fact that when you switch to the BT tab, it automatically starts playing any audio you have stored on your phone, including ringtones, etc.

I swear, the entire navigation / center console / computer - whatever you want to call it, is HORRIBLE.

Is there anybody driving a 2011 or 2012 that is successfully hearing google navigation without the need to switch to the BT channel? So stupid...

mlacomb

Ummm... well, maybe no one has integrated that feature yet - but when selecting an audio source, I don't know of any car audio manufacturer that says "override current source if you see audio coming from a bluetooth source." Source is source, if you're on CD, you're never going to hear the bluetooth audio.

To add, the car wouldn't be able to tell if it's your bluetooth nav or your cell phone's music player (or, to add, any notifications/text message alerts etc.) The audio for both uses a single streamed channel to send both.

lipappy

Actually, mlacomb, I had a car rental this weekend and it was a 2013 Chevy Cruze. I found the same post that Island Beef shared in this thread about making sure media audio was unchecked, and I was able to listen to the car's FM radio plus when the nav had something to say, it would just interject through the speakers. I can't remember if it dimmed the audio to a softer level when the nav was speaking, or if it muted the audio completely when the nav talked, but yeah it worked. That's why I asked if anyone knew how to make it work on my Lexus.

Plus, mlacomb, a phone call's audio is from a bluetooth source, and a phone call's audio is able to override music from any of the other sources, am I correct? So why is it not logical to ask if there was a way to have google nav override it as another bluetooth source?