Table of Contents
Android Auto
Only available with Premium Gold
This guide explains how to use Locus Map on your car's display via Android Auto — choosing a map, searching for destinations, navigating, and controlling the app from your phone while connected.
Before you start
- Make sure Locus Map is installed and set up on your phone.
- Connect your phone to your vehicle via Android Auto (wired or wireless, depending on the car).
- Launch Locus Map from the Android Auto app menu on the vehicle's display.
Displaying the map
Choosing which map to show
Locus Map can display any map you have available in the mobile app — LoMaps (online or offline), satellite imagery, or maps from third-party providers.
- By default, the map is selected automatically based on your phone settings.
- To pick a different map, open the map selector directly in Android Auto.
Recommended: Use the offline version of LoMap. Offline maps remain available even when you lose signal, and they support rotating place names to match your direction of travel.
Controlling the map
On the vehicle display, you can:
- Pan and recenter the map
- Zoom in and out
- Enable or disable map rotation
During active navigation, the map refreshes once per second, in line with the location update rate.
Automatic zoom during navigation
When navigation starts, Locus Map switches to the Auto preset and restores your previous settings when navigation ends.
To customize automatic zoom by speed:
- Open Locus Map on your phone.
- Find the Auto preset in the app settings.
- Adjust the zoom-by-speed behavior — it will apply the next time you navigate via Android Auto.
Day and night mode
By default, Locus Map switches between light and dark modes based on the lighting conditions reported by the vehicle. You can change this behavior in the app settings if you prefer a fixed mode.
Note: dark mode currently renders the map as an inversion of the light theme, which may not look ideal with every map type. A dedicated dark LoMap theme is planned for a future release.
Showing waypoints, routes, and overlays
You can display extra content on top of the base map:
- Custom waypoints, including geocaches — tap one to see its basic info or start turn-by-turn navigation to it.
- Planned routes prepared in the mobile app or web planner.
- Auxiliary graphics: time and distance circles, azimuth and direction lines, and dynamic elevation data near the cursor.
- Map overlays, for example, cadastral data from the WMS/WMTS library.
Searching for a destination
Locus Map performs a full-text search for points of interest (gas stations, restaurants, accommodation, campgrounds, etc.) and for mailing addresses.
- When stationary: use the keyboard or voice search via the vehicle's audio system.
- While driving: only voice search is available, for safety reasons.
- Search history is shared with the mobile app, so anything you searched for earlier on your phone shows up in Android Auto autocomplete.
Once you've picked a result, you can start turn-by-turn navigation straight away.
Navigating
You can navigate either to a single destination or along a pre-planned route.
Choosing a destination
There are three ways to pick a destination in Android Auto:
- Select a custom waypoint (for example, a geocache).
- Search for a place or address.
- Tap directly on the map — Locus Map fills in the address automatically.
Route calculation modes
Two modes are available:
- Fast — prioritizes the shortest travel time.
- Economy — optimizes for fuel efficiency.
The app remembers your last choice and confirms it automatically after 5 seconds the next time you start navigation. You can change the mode before it confirms.
Using your phone and Android Auto at the same time
Locus Map can be controlled on both the vehicle display and your phone simultaneously. Use this when you want to:
- Change the destination or navigation content on the fly from your phone.
- Use features that aren't available on the vehicle screen, such as track recording.