Open source software brings Spotify Car Thing back to life

Back in 2021, Spotify set itself apart from competing music streaming platforms by launching its own dedicated hardware for your vehicle: the Spotify Car Thing. Especially if you had an older car that didn’t offer an easy way to use Android Auto, the Car Thing represented a cheap and easy way to enjoy streaming content from behind the wheel. While Spotify ultimately shut the project down, flipping the servers off in late 2024, there’s now a new open source project ready to breathe new life into Car Thing hardware.

Spotify’s Car Thing offered a really straightforward package: a screen for finding Spotify content, and a big knob for easy interactions. But after Spotify pulled the plug on things, it wasn’t immediately clear what the future would look like for the abandoned hardware. While some users immediately started talking about hacking it, others cautioned that the very low-end hardware within didn’t offer a great platform for development. Nonetheless, we did see quite a few interesting projects emerge, and this week we’re learning about the latest one, called Mira.

From the sound of its GitHub page, this project looks reasonably full-featured. It’s not trying to be your all-in-one media player, and instead — just like Car Thing was meant to — focuses solely on Spotify.

Once you install and link to your Spotify account, you’ll be able to use Mira on your Car Thing to control your connected devices, with full use of its preset buttons, knob, and even gesture controls. You can see album art and lyrics, plus there’s basic voice control for playback commands.

Even if it’s just a remote interface for your phone, that’s probably still a lot more than your Car Thing was doing sitting in your garage these past few years. Why not dust it off, flash Mira, and let us know what you think of the experience down in the comments?