[Bug]: The Nav SDK's interactive traffic prompts aren't usable on the Auto screens

[IvelinKrastev]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Description of the bug

The Navigation SDK renders its own interactive prompts on the car map surface during guidance — traffic-incident confirmation cards (“Construction nearby … Still there / Not there”) and traffic/reroute prompts (“Slower than usual traffic … Dismiss”), enabled via GoogleMapsAutoViewController.setTrafficIncidentCardsEnabled(true) / setTrafficPromptsEnabled(true).

On Android Auto these cards render but their buttons are completely non-interactive — tapping does nothing. The root cause is that AndroidAutoBaseScreen (the screen’s SurfaceCallback) implements only pan/zoom and never onClick, so taps are never delivered to the NavigationView that drew the buttons.

We are also raising the CarPlay side as a parallel question, since this is one cross-platform SDK: the CarPlay path is architecturally different (and we haven’t verified it yet), so we’d like the maintainers to confirm whether interactive prompts are tappable on CarPlay or are intentionally display-only. Details in the CarPlay section.

Flutter version

3.44.1

Package version

0.9.4

Native SDK versions

• I haven't changed the version of the native SDKs

Flutter Doctor Output

flutter doctor
Doctor summary (to see all details, run flutter doctor -v):
[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.44.1, on macOS 26.5 25F71 darwin-arm64, locale en-BG)
[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 36.1.0-rc1)
[✓] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS (Xcode 26.5)
[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
[✓] Connected device (3 available)
[✓] Network resources

• No issues found!

Steps to reproduce

1. Subclass AndroidAutoBaseScreen for the Android Auto screen (as the example shows).
2. Start guidance and enable the prompts on the auto view:

   await autoViewController.setTrafficPromptsEnabled(true);
   await autoViewController.setTrafficIncidentCardsEnabled(true);

3. Drive/simulate until the SDK shows an interactive prompt (incident card, or a prompt with Dismiss).
4. Tap any button on the head unit (DHU or real car).

Expected vs Actual Behavior

Expected

Tapping triggers the SDK’s built-in action (submit incident confirmation / dismiss), as on the phone GoogleMapsNavigationView.

Actual

Nothing happens. The buttons are inert; the prompt only disappears on its own timeout.

Code Sample

Root cause

AndroidAutoBaseScreen implements androidx.car.app.SurfaceCallback but overrides only onScroll and onScale; it does not override SurfaceCallback.onClick(float x, float y) (or onFling).

android/src/main/kotlin/com/google/maps/flutter/navigation/AndroidAutoBaseScreen.kt:

override fun onScroll(distanceX: Float, distanceY: Float) {
  mGoogleMap?.moveCamera(CameraUpdateFactory.scrollBy(distanceX, distanceY))
}
override fun onScale(focusX: Float, focusY: Float, scaleFactor: Float) {
  val update = CameraUpdateFactory.zoomBy((scaleFactor - 1), Point(focusX.toInt(), focusY.toInt()))
  mGoogleMap?.animateCamera(update)
}
// no onClick(...) — taps are never handled

The NavigationView is hosted on a Presentation over a VirtualDisplay, so it does not receive the car’s touch directly — the only path for taps is SurfaceCallback.onClick, which the plugin must translate and dispatch into the view. Pan/zoom are bridged; taps are not, so the SDK’s own interactive prompt UI is unreachable.

Additional Context

No response

[IvelinKrastev]

Hey @jokerttu @illuminati1911,

Can you confirm if this is an issue in the Flutter SDK or if we should forward it to the native SDK teams?

[illuminati1911]

@IvelinKrastev On Android side this is most likely missing feature on the Flutter SDK. Will need further investigation to confirm.

On Carplay it's a bit different. AFAIK versions before iOS 26 don't support directly tapping the UI elements. Version 26 and later might support it but this also needs some investigation from our side.