Ask Lemmy

You want to still do so many things that it may be easier to replace your car by a bus pass

I would recommend disabling functionality while driving rather than outright not having the phone available because if you need to call for help, you might have to do it quickly. There are apps like Dumb Phone for iPhone and devices like Brick that will do the work for you.

I set a focus mode on my iPhone to trigger when connected to my car’s Bluetooth (not the standard Driving focus mode) that switches the Home Screen to one with only the widgets I’d use for driving, such as Maps, Music, and various playlist shortcuts. Notifications are limited to VIPs. I also have an automation that locks the screen if sensitive apps, like Settings and Wallet, are opened when away from home (I have a shortcut to disable the automation when necessary).

In your situation, I’d expand that to lock out every app except Maps, parking apps, etc., when in driving focus. Audio apps would be locked so I’m not doomscrolling through choices, options would be limited to what’s shown in the widgets and accessible through Siri and/or a preset shortcut. Could add further measures to dissuade me from disabling the lock.

Tasker can still automate almost all of this for you.

I setup some tasker automations so that I can leave my phone entirely in my pocket. When my phone connects to my car Bluetooth it: turns up media volume, sets the phone to "do not disturb", opens and starts playing the last music player I was using (podcast, Spotify, Plexamp, or your media player of choice. Notably mine never switches to things that play video by default), initiates lockdown on my phone in case of fascists, etc. If I want to navigate somewhere or choose something different to listen to, that is something I start before I start the car. I get all my navigation cues via voice guidance, but the quality of that guidance can suffer from vagueness in general and confusion specifically in the midst of construction. I used to have it automatically read text messages aloud, but between reaction emojis, photos, gifs, and links that became super annoying. You can also setup an auto-reply to incoming texts that just say, "I'm driving and I'll get back to you later." That turned out to be annoying to, so I just silence them all. When my phone disconnects from my car Bluetooth, tasker sets everything back to the way it was before with the exception of lockdown mode.

Using voice commands kind of requires relaxing your privacy requirements, so I left those options out of this discussion.

I love carplay, I now it's bot the same thing as Android Auto, but I would be very surprised if Android can't do what iOS does.

My phone automatically goes into driving mode as it connects to my carplay unit, this mutes messages and tells the sender that I am driving with focus, it does give them the option to reply "Urgent" to force the message to go through, but no one has ever needed that.

The result is that I am blocked off from notifications other than the phone or maps, leading to blissful distraction free driving

Get a double din head unit with Garmin GPS. Do all your podcasts, books, music, etc via an SD card and swap all the maps every so often with OpenStreetMaps for free

a Spotify car thing would have checked all these boxes except for free and a pony, but they murdered it in its crib.

Do they still make head units? I bet a radio/head unit running android auto would do all this.

something like this, with your phone connected over Bluetooth or USB and the locked in the glove box

https://carpartsfaq.com/best-android-auto-double-din/