2017 HU with streaming music from phone

[Go Frogs]

Originally Posted by Rederick

god damn this head unit sucks. I have a 2017, and thought I was going crazy trying to get pandora/bluetooth audio to work more than 1% of the time. I for the life of me can not figure out what magical process is required to get pandora to link up via bluetooth. I just works randomly once then never again for a few weeks.

have you done a soft and/or hard reset of the HU?

I'm sure just turning the car on/off is not sufficient and the unit needs to be rebooted.

This has been the case in our CX-5, where the HU froze on a song/artist for two days straight, after multiple vehicle uses.

After the soft reboot, the unit functioned as normal. During the frozen screen, music still played and we could change sources/stations, but the information displayed always went back to the same artist/song regardless of the music being played.

I've looked all over Subaru's site and Clarion's and needless to say, there is bupkis about firmware updates for the 6.2-6.5 Starlink HU.

Have you contacted Subaru customer support about your issues/dissatisfaction?

[Brink]

Originally Posted by Rederick

god damn this head unit sucks. I have a 2017, and thought I was going crazy trying to get pandora/bluetooth audio to work more than 1% of the time. I for the life of me can not figure out what magical process is required to get pandora to link up via bluetooth. I just works randomly once then never again for a few weeks.

The most reliable way I've found to get Pandora/bluetooth to work is to start playing Pandora on my phone and pause it right before I get in the car. Otherwise it will randomly just start playing from itunes instead, even if Pandora was the last app playing. Also, if you're on wifi at home that could be causing problems too. If you have a weak wifi signal as you're starting the car Pandora will go into offline mode and not play. So turn wifi off, play/pause pandora, and get in the car. Works for me most of the time, though not 100%.

[Victorscp]

the 2018 HU is garbage as well.... i had a hell of a time trying to get pandora to work in my car. i am tempted to try reading the owners manual for tips but i feel like subaru customer service might get a call. i get it, its not the best unit but at least do what your programmed to do.

[Brink]

Originally Posted by Victorscp

the 2018 HU is garbage as well.... i had a hell of a time trying to get pandora to work in my car. i am tempted to try reading the owners manual for tips but i feel like subaru customer service might get a call. i get it, its not the best unit but at least do what your programmed to do.

The problem loading pandora (at least on the '17 HU) seems to be because starlink has some sort of pandora integration, so if you try to launch pandora from your phone after it's connected to the HU the phone is just like "lol starlink" and doesn't do anything. Presumably this means if I launch starlink and run pandora from there it would work, but starlink is such a steaming pile of garbage and takes forever for the HU to load so I don't bother. The way I do it I guess tricks the phone into resuming what was playing on pandora before it realizes what it's connected to. IIRC starlink on iphone actually requires a USB connection to work properly, it won't work over bluetooth, but the bluetooth connection is enough for starlink to block pandora from working normally.

[Victorscp]

so should i just delete the starlink app on my phone?

[Brink]

I don't know if that will make a difference or not, haven't tried it myself. Could be that the HU detects that pandora is playing even without starlink installed on the phone. Guess you could try it and if it doesn't fix the problem you could always reinstall the app (or not).

[Victorscp]

update i took off the starlink app and pandora works now in my car. still takes forever to load but it loads and plays music and the display keeps up with the songs

[Brink]

Guess I'll have to do that then. Not like I actually use the starlink app anyway. Installed it when I first got the car to try out the nav and haven't used it since.

[Brink]

Deleted starlink app and no change using pandora - HU still doesn't update track info.

[Victorscp]

in the app there is a setting under advance that says start pandora when your phone connects to your car try that and see if it works

[DCBeltwaymoveright]

What is your experience with other functions interrupting the music player? Like can Waze pause or lower the music to tell you there is something ahead, and then bring the music back up without you having to do anything?

My 2014 FRS HU worked so much better than this 17 BRZ. I'm using an iPhone.

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