How to Meet Compliance Requirements for Android Auto & Apple CarPlay

The moment a mobile app enters the vehicle environment, it stops being just an app, it becomes part of a regulated, safety-critical system.
Whether it’s navigation, media, messaging, or voice interactions, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay place mobile applications inside a space governed by strict rules designed to protect the driver and preserve consistency across different vehicle manufacturers.

For teams building these experiences, the real challenge isn’t only the UI or the projection behavior, it’s understanding the compliance frameworks that determine what an app is allowed to do once projected inside the cabin. Apple, Google, and the OEMs each impose their own requirements, and those requirements directly influence design decisions, scenarios that must be validated, and the level of test coverage expected before a release is approved.

This is why projected app testing has become its own discipline. It’s not about checking whether a screen renders correctly; it’s about verifying that the app behaves safely under motion, responds predictably to events and passes audit-grade validation processes such as ASPICE.

The complexity grows further when you introduce real-world variables, different iOS and Android versions, device behaviors, OEM head-unit implementations, and network conditions that impact navigation and voice. Traditional in-vehicle testing setups simply can’t scale to cover the required breadth.

A modern testing strategy requires a controlled, repeatable way to validate projected experiences across a wide range of real devices. And that’s why more automotive teams are looking for easier solutions, turning to the possibility of using remote test labs: to bring compliance, repeatability, and full traceability to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay testing without relying on physical cars or one-off setups.

Why Compliance Matters in Car Projection Testing

Projected apps sit in a unique place. They are:

• Mobile apps — developed and deployed like a standard iOS or Android app
• Automotive experiences — displayed through OEM head units
• Safety-impacting user interfaces — regulated by strict guidelines

What makes Android Auto and Apple CarPlay different is that they sit at the intersection of mobile, automotive, compliance, and safety, and your testing strategy must reflect that.

Here are the three compliance pillars that every automotive app, engineering team, and QA organization must align with.

1. Driver Distraction Guidelines

The rules that protect drivers and shape UI/UX requirements

Both Apple and Google have strict human-factors guidelines that govern:

• On-screen tap targets
• Number of interactions allowed while driving
• Text length, font sizes, and readability
• How and when notifications appear
• What visual elements are allowed, prohibited, or must be simplified while moving

These guidelines exist so that every interaction inside the car minimizes cognitive load.

When an infotainment app is projected, Apple and Google actively enforce these requirements. Apps can be rejected during certification if they:

• Show unsupported UI layouts
• Expose distracting animations
• Allow unsafe touch sequences
• Trigger alerts or interactions at the wrong time
• Break interaction rules based on vehicle speed

Why this matters for testing

Driver Distraction Guidelines turn UX validation into a compliance check, not just a visual check. Your testing strategy must validate:

• Behavior when the car transitions between stationary → moving
• Behavior when voice commands override touch
• Distraction-safe mode transitions
• Visual misalignment caused by projection scaling

Testing projected apps manually on local devices is slow, inconsistent, and hard to scale. To meet distraction compliance, teams need consistent, repeatable validation environments across many iOS/Android versions, device models, and OS builds.

2. OEM-Specific HMI Requirements

Car companies impose their own rules and they vary widely

While Apple and Google govern projected experiences, OEMs (Ford, GM, BMW, Hyundai, Toyota, etc.) impose an additional layer of rules.

OEM HMI specifications often define:

• How notifications behave within the head unit
• How UI elements map to physical car controls
• What behaviors must remain consistent across head units
• Performance expectations (latency, loading times, freezes)
• Error recovery behavior (projection cable disconnects, wireless reconnects)

Why this matters for testing

Even if your mobile app behaves perfectly on your desk, OEMs can still fail the experience if:

• UI elements misalign on certain aspect ratios
• System events break the projected UI
• Touch or scroll gestures behave inconsistently
• Voice interaction doesn’t properly map to steering-wheel buttons
• Audio routing fails during navigation prompts

Projected apps must feel identical across all OEM head units, and this is where test coverage gaps quickly emerge.

Validating these behaviors requires:

• Real iOS and Android devices
• Cloud scalability
• Repeatable test plans
• Automated interaction simulation
• A way to test many OS and device combinations quickly

This is where remote device labs give engineering teams a major advantage.

3. ASPICE Compliance

The process framework that dictates HOW automotive teams’ test

ASPICE (Automotive SPICE) is a detailed process maturity model used by automotive OEMs and suppliers to ensure:

• Repeatable, standardized validation processes
• Traceability from requirements → tests → defects → resolutions
• Coverage completeness across all functional and non-functional areas
• Process consistency across distributed teams
• Auditable evidence of software quality

Why this matters for projected app testing

ASPICE compliance is impossible if your infotainment testing is:

• Manual
• Unstructured
• Unrepeatable
• Not traceable
• Difficult to reproduce consistently

Car projection testing has traditionally suffered from exactly these challenges, because labs are physically tied to vehicles, cables, and limited head units.

A modern approach requires:

• Automated validation
• Repeatable test plans
• Versioned results
• Session recordings
• Reproducibility across many device models
• Integration into CI/CD

ASPICE doesn’t just demand testing, it demands an auditable, scalable system for testing.

How Projected Apps Are Tested Today — and Why It Falls Short

For most teams, validating Android Auto and Apple CarPlay still means doing everything manually. A developer or QA engineer sits with a physical car, plugs in a device, runs through a handful of scenarios, swaps phones, repeats the same steps, and hopes the results stay consistent across OS updates. Others try to approximate the experience through partial simulators or development tools, but these setups either don’t mirror real projection conditions and behaviors or requires local hardware & software setup which can be difficult to maintain and spin up.

While these approaches work, they can quickly become painful. And because everything is done by hand, there’s no reliable way to meet ASPICE requirements for repeatability, traceability, or process consistency.

The consequence is predictable: gaps in coverage, limited device variation, slow feedback loops, and inconsistent results that jeopardize certification.

The Modern Approach: Testing Android Auto & CarPlay on a Remote Cloud Lab

A cloud-based real-device lab like Digital.ai Testing removes physical bottlenecks by giving teams access to:

• Real iOS & Android devices
• Preconfigured environments for Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, and AAOS (Android Automotive Operating System)
• Full video and log capture
• Automated testing via Appium
• Session recordings for ASPICE traceability
• Easy scalability across multiple OS/device combinations

This directly supports all three compliance pillars:

✔ Driver Distraction Guidelines – Run repeatable tests across devices, validate UI alignment, and test behavior while “driving”.

✔ OEM HMI Requirements – Verify consistent behavior across device and OS variations, even when OEM head units interpret projection differently.

✔ ASPICE – Create traceable, reproducible, automated test processes that pass audits and OEM compliance checks.

Cloud-based projected app testing streamlines certification, accelerates releases, and gives teams consistent, repeatable validation without the constraints of physical setups.

The Road Ahead for Automotive App Testing

As the automotive space moves toward true software-defined vehicles, projected experiences will only expand. Google’s “Car Ready Mobile Apps” initiative (2025) alone signals massive growth in new app categories entering cars.

Which means:

• More apps will need compliance
• More apps will require consistent validation
• More teams will need scalable testing environments
• And UX expectations will only increase

The automotive industry is entering a new phase, and the way we test must catch up. Compliance is not a box to check; it’s how you ensure your app is safe, consistent, and trustworthy inside a moving vehicle.