I connect my android phone without USB cable. I assume that means bluetooth. When listening to music stored on that phone (not streaming), regularly the sound will drop momentarily. I don't know yet (just bought this 2025 ES300h) if it the same issue while streaming.
Is the only fix for that using USB to connect or is there a wireless fix?

 

How your phone is connected to the car? Are you using regular Bluetooth, or Wireless Android Auto? And which music player app are you using for your locally stored songs?

A lot of people assume Wireless Android Auto runs over Bluetooth, but it actually uses Wi-Fi Direct. That means if the Wi-Fi signal between your phone and the car isn’t strong or gets interfered with, audio can stutter or cut out. On the other hand, if you’re connected through Bluetooth only, the problem might simply be Bluetooth’s limited bandwidth. Bluetooth was never designed for high-fidelity audio, so it can be more sensitive to dropouts.

There are a few other common causes too. Some phones have aggressive battery optimization that shuts down background apps, including music players, which interrupts playback. Software glitches on either the phone or the car’s head unit can have the same effect and may be fixed by updating the system software.

Quick things to try:

• Restart the phone (Most people rarely do this, and it can resolve temporary glitches.)
• Disable battery saver or remove background restrictions for your music app.
• Test another music app or streaming source. This helps determine if the issue is app-specific.
• Try connecting via USB cable. If the audio works perfectly over USB, then wireless interference is the likely cause.

 

It depends upon how you registered your Android phone with the vehicle's Lexus Interface Bluetooth device handling system. The dependency is whether you registered it as a "Use for phone" and/or "Use for media" or a "Use for Android Auto" device.

For a "Use for phone" and/or "Use for media" registered Android phone, the phone's wireless connection to the Lexus Interface system will always be Bluetooth.

For a "Use for Android Auto" registered Android phone, the phone's initial wireless connection will be Bluetooth for the brief period while the Lexus Interface system and the Android phone communicate the details on establishing a Wi-Fi Direct wireless connection. Once the Wi-Fi Direct wireless connection is established, all further wireless communications between the Lexus Interface system and the Android phone will use that Wi-Fi Direct wireless connection, and there will be no further use of Bluetooth wireless communication between that phone and the Lexus Interface system.
There was an Android Auto music cuts out sometimes thread on that happening with Android Auto and Android phones. There wasn't a fix mentioned in that thread, and I don't know if anyone has discussed anything on the issue since then.

 

I've been wrestling with Spotify "skipping" / cutting out as well. I have an Android phone. There is a lot of chatter about this issue on the Spotify forums as well so it's not unique to Lexus. Some people on the Spotify Q&A feel strongly that it has to do with the "Start a Jam" feature that Spotify added a while ago and they indicate how to disable that Jam feature on the phone running Spotify BUT they only list the fix for Apple phones not Android.

If anyone here knows how to disable the Jam feature on Spotify using an Android device, please chime in here and I'll try it.

 

Same thing happens to me, across multiple phones.

I believe wireless Android Auto uses wifi to transmit the data back and forth. I haven't tried it myself, but a good way to test would be to just do a bluetooth connection for music, no Android Auto Wireless, and see if it still happens or not.

 

After speaking with Spotify support today regarding my Android Pixel 5 phone, if you open Spotify, then upper left tap your face or name initial to get to your "profile", you will see SETTINGS (and gear icon). Tap that and you should see JAM where you can disable the Jam Session function. I did not see the Jam Session function on mine so they said to pull the latest update which I did but still no Jam Session listed in Settings. They finally blamed my device and said apparently my device does not support the on/off function which is strange.

I do however understand that my Google Pixel 5 is about 6 years old so "maybe" there is some truth to it. Perhaps someone with a newer Android phone that has the skipping issue can check their settings to see if Jam appears and try toggling it off.

Worst case I'll delete the phone from the car and re-add it and try to use bluetooth only as I've read that Android Auto using wi-fi has something to do with it. This makes some sense as my previous car (Mazda 6) did not have the Spotify skip issue or Wi-Fi.