Music through USB on android---WORKING!

Austin9991 · Mar 19, 2014

Hey fellow cruzers, I was finally able to get my HTC One to play music through a USB cable!

I had to activate myself as a developer on the phone, and then under the newly added "developer settings" in the settings menu I activated USB debugging. Now when my car is playing xm radio and I plug my phone in, it immediately starts playing my music. Indexing is very quick as well.

All steering wheel controls are working, however I cannot control the music through my phone. The car believes my phone is simply a USB stick, so you need to control using stereo interface and the menu button on the console.

DaDankMan · Mar 20, 2014

How would I do this on a galaxy s3?

benzo90 · Mar 20, 2014

or if you have an iphone you just plug it up as well

. Nothing needed, just the ability to plug in a usb cable.

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

DaDankMan said:
How would I do this on a galaxy s3?

1. Go to your settings and find: more, then about device.

2. Find the device build number

3. Tap on the build number 7 times--this activates you as a devloper

4. Now return to the settings menu and click on "developer options" (may be a slightly different name on gs3)

5. USB debugging should be one of the first options. Turn it on

6. Plug in via USB in the cruze and switch between input modes and hopefully it finds your device!

Be sure to have your music saved in the proper music folder. Audio quality is much better than through aux. Much more bass too.
Let me know if it works for you, if it does I may need to make a how to thread.

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

benzo90 said:
or if you have an iphone you just plug it up as well . Nothing needed, just the ability to plug in a usb cable.

That's taking the easy way out lol

CW_ · Mar 20, 2014

I've said this before in other posts, but it works fine with my Android phone (LG Nexus 4) with or without developer mode turned on. My understanding is that if you can plug the phone into your computer and see the files on it without having to have special software installed, it should just work with the Cruze stereo. The base model stereo in my 2012 (and I'd assume the MyLink one as well) appears to support at least the following on the USB port. Sorry if this is full of technical mumbo-jumbo, if this is at all of interest and someone would like me to explain something better, just ask.

* iPhones. This is the exception to my 'no special software' thing, but everybody and their neighbor's golden retriever has one, so you have to make the car work with one if you're going to offer USB audio. I don't own an iPhone so I've never tried plugging one into my car, but if they didn't work everyone would be screaming.

* Regular old USB flash drives formatted as FAT32, or things that look like a regular old USB flash drive (things that mount as "USB Mass Storage" for instance). Older Android OS versions used USB Mass Storage and look like a flashdrive to your computer/car stereo. I've never tried other file systems, NTFS *might* work, I'd be shocked if HFS (Mac OS X default) or ext4 (Linux default) did.

* Devices that speak MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). This was originally a Microsoft protocol but later got adopted as an official USB standard. Windows Mobile phones and some newer Android phones like my Nexus 4 usually speak MTP.

For both USB Flash and MTP, the Cruze stereo has to build an "index" of all the things that it thinks are music on the drive/phone. This does have the annoying quirk that on an Android phone it will find things like ring tones, speech samples from the Google Maps app, and the like. I have not found a fix for this issue, there very well may not be one since the car just assumes that anything that looks like music is music. Building the index takes a little while, but not nearly as long as it does on the "Sync by Microsoft" radio on the Ford Taurus I'm stuck with as a rental car this week (several *minutes* before you can even play any music, the Cruze is at least reasonable enough to start playing the first thing it finds that looks like music so you can listen to something while it's indexing).

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

CW, the cruze reads mine as an mtp now, but before developer mode and USB debugging it wouldn't do anything when I plugged it in. When I plugged it in to my laptop I could see all the files fine, must be only certain Android phones.

CW_ · Mar 20, 2014

Ah, that could be. My phone runs unmodified Android since it's a Google device, it's possible Samsung turns off USB access on their phones by default or has them in some other screwy mode... odd that it'd work on a laptop but not the Cruze.

Smurfenstein · Mar 20, 2014

benzo90 said:
or if you have an iphone you just plug it up as well . Nothing needed, just the ability to plug in a usb cable.

Not all iphones work. I've had friends with the new 5s's plug them in and half the time it wont connect. Or when it does it wigs out every now and then.

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

CW_ said:
Ah, that could be. My phone runs unmodified Android since it's a Google device, it's possible Samsung turns off USB access on their phones by default or has them in some other screwy mode... odd that it'd work on a laptop but not the Cruze.

I agree that it was odd that it wouldn't work. But since my HTC one has htc's sense ui instead of vanilla Android like the nexus I'm assuming the problem lies somewhere there.

DaDankMan · Mar 20, 2014

Cool thanks austin. I will update if it works

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

DaDankMan said:
Cool thanks austin. I will update if it works

Any news??

DaDankMan · Mar 20, 2014

Got into developer mode and turned on the debug and was not able to get it working. Guess im stickin to the aux cable lol

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

did the cruze try to connect to it or anything? because on one of my usb cables it will try to connect but then say nothing found or whatever the error is. I tried a different usb cable and all of a sudden it started playing.

DaDankMan · Mar 20, 2014

Didnt get any response from the car other than it charging my phone and I was using the samsung cable. Maybe ill try a different one

Austin9991 · Mar 20, 2014

worth a try. weird that it worked for me. your phone is unlocked with the screen on when you plug it in?

CW_ · Mar 21, 2014

You might also need to make sure the phone's USB port is in MTP mode and not PTP mode - I'm not sure if the Cruze knows what to do with PTP. At least on my phone, that setting is under Settings, Storage, then tap on the icon that looks like 3 squares stacked one on top of the other in the top left of the screen below the clock, and click on the "USB Computer Connection" button that appears.

ALBERTA · May 21, 2014

I am pretty sure I have one of the Cruze's that refuses to play anything through USB. Not to mention that it barely supplies enough power to charge my phone. from 7% to 13% in 1 hour of driving. Must put out 0.01 amps of power to be that slow.

I have tried everything on here to get the music to play. I bought an SD card for my Galaxy S3. Loaded up music from iTunes onto it. Put my phone in developer mode with the debuggy USB thingy option on. Go and plug it in and instant "NO SUPPORTED DATA FOUND". Other times it doesn't say anything, as if I didn't plug it in at all.:mellow:

Very frustrating as the ability to play music this way was one of the many selling points of this car over my old one.:disgust:

phantom · May 21, 2014

Austin9991 said:
1. Go to your settings and find: more, then about device.

2. Find the device build number

3. Tap on the build number 7 times--this activates you as a devloper

4. Now return to the settings menu and click on "developer options" (may be a slightly different name on gs3)

5. USB debugging should be one of the first options. Turn it on

6. Plug in via USB in the cruze and switch between input modes and hopefully it finds your device!

Be sure to have your music saved in the proper music folder. Audio quality is much better than through aux. Much more bass too.
Let me know if it works for you, if it does I may need to make a how to thread.

Tried it on a Galaxy Note II [N7100] which lost the debug mode option after upgrading to KitKat, and it works!

cheers and thanks for the tip!

money_man · May 21, 2014

Why aren't you guys just using the Bluetooth? Wait...does the lower model cruze's not have it?

Music through USB on android---WORKING!

Austin9991

DaDankMan

benzo90

Austin9991

Austin9991

CW_

Austin9991

CW_

Smurfenstein

Austin9991

DaDankMan

Austin9991

DaDankMan

Austin9991

DaDankMan

Austin9991

CW_

ALBERTA

phantom

money_man

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