I was recently using another rental car, in which I had to struggle with both /e/ phones we have (FairPhone 3, Samsung Galaxy S8).
When plugged in to load the phones, every 30 seconds or so a pop-up appeared saying s.th. like
Android Automotive: No application.
… and of course a completely useless link to the Android website’s front page.
Essentially, this meant that navigating with the phone plugged into the car was impossible.
Note, that the popups appear independent of any application, though. I actually think the root problem of the pop-ups is in the Android core.
The car model was a Hyundai i30.
In the USB settings, the selector jumped automatically from ‘no data tranfer’ to ‘transfer data’ just before the pop-up. I could trigger the pop-up by manually choosing another option than ‘data transfer’.
Is there a way to completely block the intrusive car? I would expect, that if I select ‘no data transfer’ that this security-relevant option is 100% respected by the phone, and a possibly misbehaving car (or hacker) would be ignored.
P.S.: In case you have the same problem, if you have a powerbank, you can plug that between the car and phone. This did not load the phone 100% sufficiently for me, though.
Hm, in the Galaxy S8 (Android 11) indeed found this Car Mode (I guess, my German phone says “Automodus”).
In the Fairphone 3 (Android 12), though I did not even have “Apps & Notifications”. Instead, I could search for “Android System”, and find the “Autosettings”, or reach it via Settings > Apps > … > Show Systems Apps > Android System > Car Mode/“Autosettings”.
BTW, searching for “Auto” (or “Car”) did not find the “Automode”, which means the option was only visible in the FP3 hidden deep in the configurations. I have to admit that I find the Android menus confusing, at best. And that they are different on Android 11 (S3) and 12 (FP3) is also not helpful.
Furthermore, I also found Settings > Notifications > Pop-up (show important messages in a little, floating window). The message that was displayed was not a normal notification but really a little floating pop-up. The option was turned on for me.
On the FP3 (Android 12) searching for “pop-up” I also found Settings > Notifications > Do not disturb > Display Options for Suppressed Notifications > Custom > No pop-up notifications (sorry, everything translated from German).
Unfortunately, I cannot test these options now anymore – the car was only rented for the weekend, – but I will try it the next time. If anybody else has the problem, I’d be happy to hear what worked for you.