Toyota Entune Reviews

I love my 2016 Tacoma, but the Entune App is terrible. Unusable, even. I finally got fed up and uninstalled it. Toyota couldn’t be bothered to make ToyotaEntune remember my login and password, so when ToyotaEntune booted me for no apparent reason (for what felt like the thousandth time), I had to pull over, look up the login and password, and type it in manually before pulling back into traffic and activating Pandora. Hundreds of other apps just let me use my fingerprint to log in, but not this one. I just want the convenience of Car Play, like so many other iPhone/new car combo owners get to enjoy. Things get even worse when trying to use Toyota’s inept version of Siri. She still has not successfully completed a set of voice instructions to provide directions or any other of the services she’s supposed to be able to provide, and I’ve owned the ‘16 Tacoma since ‘16. Appalling. Why do you hate us, Toyota? Why can’t you stick to what you do best- which is make great pickups, and let Apple stick to what they do best- design smooth user interface that pairs expertly with the latest technology? You could be giving us the best of both worlds, but instead you’re giving us great cars that place just between grocery store automatic checkout machine and Coco the gorilla on the smart user interface spectrum. Well-meaning, but far from expert. You can do better.

I have a 2017 Tacoma bought the end of that year and since I have owned it, I have loved everything about it......eeeeeexcept the 3600$ Entune Stereo. This is the most inept, under par, non functional piece of technology I have ever used in a vehicle. I have to continually connect and reconnect the application. I cannot change channels when the car is moving. The stereo reboots constantly, my phone disconnects and reconnects in the middle of phone calls, I now have 2 music apps both of which are garbage and on and on and on. I wouldn’t be upset if my issue was speaker related.. I could swallow that just because no car maker has ever put in a decent stereo system in a car. BUT if your going to tout a product that jacks the cost of the car nearly 4000$ and then have that product no better than a 49$ piece you by at a pawn shop you have got issues. This is my first Toyota. I want to keep it stock. I really don’t want to put another stereo head unit in this car. Just for thinking about this, Toyota has made me feel ripped off. That 4000$ could have gone to lift kit for the vehicle and rims and tires but instead I have something that flat doesn’t work. I am really disappointed. This being my first Toyota experience, this part is REALLY disappointing.

My Toyota RAV4 EV worked beautifully with ToyotaEntune. I could remote climate and remote charge great with ToyotaEntune.

Then they shut down ToyotaEntune and moved us to the half baked attempt of Toyota app. Toyota app is 100% worthless and worked a little at the beginning. Then they made changed and it stopped working all together. I called Toyota to have them fix either the entune app or the Toyota app and all I get is email after email every week or 2 saying they’re still working on the problem. Now Toyota app doesn’t even have the features I use everyday like remote charge and remote climate.

Now I’m paying for features I can’t even use when they told us they were shutting off safety connect in sept. Honestly it was better for them to keep the entune app working until sept where we had all features working until sept and not move us to Toyota app till after sept! But no they chose to shaft us and take our money too. Then cancel our service in sept instead of doing what gm did with onstar during the 2g shutdown. Gm replaced all the onstar radios in the cars. Toyota needs to change our safety connect radios to 4g models and stop taking features away from us!

Entune in my 2017 Highlander is bad enough, but ToyotaEntune makes it even worse (if that’s possible). It caches your credentials (good) and tries to log in every time you start your car (uh, ok I guess...but why?). Unfortunately, if it can’t log in for any reason (like your phone has no signal in the parking garage or a rural area), it throws your credentials away and makes you re-enter them. Which, of course, you you can’t BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO SIGNAL!! It also jumps to the foreground and pushes useful apps, like Google Maps to the background.

When it is connected, it doesn’t do much. You can stream Pandora, but it’s so clunky it’s easier just to use Bluetooth to stream through ToyotaEntune on my phone. Facebook Locations? Does anyone actually use that? Movie listings? Easier on the phone. Basically, anything that you can do through Entune is easier directly through your phone.

So - love my 2017 Toyota Highlander. Already have 40,000 miles on it and it’s not even two years old. But in 2019, when I have 60,000 miles and it’s time for a new one, I’ll be looking hard at the Honda Pilot (which has CarPlay) unless Entune has been replaced.

Sure, Toyota is making Entune worse. With the removal of Pandora and other apps, Entune is quickly falling behind all other available options for every other vehicle out there. The only other decent aspect of ToyotaEntune was the Fuel Guides which actually list in order prices of fuel in the area around you. They managed to make that worse with this latest update as well. Now I get to click on each little fuel icon on the map in my area to see what the price is there. Seriously?!

I am a software product owner, and I would quickly lose my job for some of the poor changes that are happening with these updates, outside of the fact that Toyota can’t seem to keep Pandora on their list of options.

To make it worse. Toyota is rolling out CarPlay, finally, but only for new vehicles. So I’m stuck with the worst experience available to any driver out there. In hindsight, this aspect alone would have made me choose Ford, Dodge, or Chevy in a heartbeat. I’m fed up with ToyotaEntune. It’s the most terrible product I have to use... and I am forced to use it daily.

The Entune app *technically* functions, in that it can be used to play audio from my iPhone in my 2012 Prius. It doesn't exactly function consistently (frequently has to be disconnected and reconnected repeatedly to get past the "loading" screen), precisely (forget about your passengers watching videos, given the half-second audio lag), or when intended (connecting your phone to charge the battery? Better hope you want to hear the beginning of your iTunes playlist every time!), but it does function in the most basic sense of the word.

Honestly, you may be better off just buying an audio-to-radio-frequency adapter and skipping the audio interface entirely. At least the driving directions through Entune could be a nice help if you don't already have a smartphone with that functionality, but the interface there is pretty weak as well. I guess the Pandora connection is a nice touch?

I only mention this recent issue since their latest update (May 2018), because it could potentially be a hazard while driving. Whatever they did with the update, the voice command suddenly stopped working. This means people could potentially try to call someone manually, taking their eyes off the road. It’s been a couple of weeks now since I reported this, and it’s something that needs to be fixed ASAP.
Other issues when hitting the voice command button on their steering wheel, it sometimes cut off audio of radio. Causing user to now fiddle with the dashboard radio to get it to work again.

RECOMMENDATION: Add the TuneIn Radio app. More radio stations are on TuneIn than iHeart, and it would be helpful to be able to simply do voice command to play station on TuneIn, or simply touch a station on the present.

ToyotaEntune is such an insult on everybody spending >20k on a new Toyota. I was excited getting my new 2017(!) Toyota. Knowing that car manufacturers are a little bit behind the times, I expected at least level of ten years ago. The whole electronic/entertainment system is just a joke.

First of all FINALLY FIX THIS STUPID BUG THAT ToyotaEntune IS ALWAYS LOGGING OUT! Thousands of people are complaining and you’re just ignoring them??

Furthermore I can just second what pretty much everybody is saying: ToyotaEntune is unstable, unreliable and pretty useless.

Why are you ignoring your customers? Why aren’t you finally implementing a setting that music does not start every time you get into the car and connects to the cellphone?

A couple of other suggestions to reach at least year 2000:

- stop infantilizing your customers by deactivating all functionality while car is moving!! Or don’t even provide a setting! Google maps is so much handier

- make a real connection to the car ... like google be Apple car connect

- Google and Waze have real time traffic updates, are faster, more versatile , I can enter anything as supposed to an address and it will find it. Why should anyone clear in mind bother with this piece of crap?

- ability to “send” a location to the car from google maps

- Ability to lock/unlock car via smartphone over Bluetooth (NOT internet /cloud)

Uvm

I am on my 3rd and last Toyota. It was the right car for my family for other reasons, but the Bluetooth system NEVER worked well and NEVER improved over the life of THREE different versions of the car. Using ToyotaEntune makes no difference to the quality (or lack thereof) of the car’s ability to interact with one’s phone.

Sometimes it connects, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s all I know. Attempts to systematically isolate the problem over a number of years proved fruitless.

Tangentially related, Toyota’s service has been VERY sub-par. I would not recommend servicing a Toyota with the dealership, or at least ours, and researching other dealerships in the area suggested we were using the best one. Pointing out that we would (accurately, given our history) flip the car for a fully loaded new model if only we could receive reliable car maintenance from the dealership did not motivate their service department.

I have a 2017 Prius Prime Advance and would like to say it works but very slow giving results for checking battery per cent. When you start charging it gives you and Error unable to process your request Please try later you hit OK then it will start charging been like that since I bought the car. You would think by now that would have been fixed.
I really like the car but they are soooo slow with updating and keeping up with times the Alexa app works but what you have to go through a lot of pain staking procedures to get it to hook up and then when it does you ask for a radio station say a AM station it will only hooks up to XM cancel it out try again it goes back to XM to the same station it does that no matter what radio station you try.
All I have to say is ToyotaEntune needs a lot of work it seems like the software Dept. it on extended leave.

I purchased a 2016 Avalon Hybrid two months ago and since the third week I owned this vehicle the Bluetooth system is a joke! I had a 2011 Sienna previous with no Bluetooth issues! Any time I try to make a phone call through my Bluetooth system my whole navigation screen crashes and reboots twice. I refuse to take my car in for warranty work having to pay my $200 deductible for an issue with making phone calls through entune! I have decided to just not connect my phone through my car! What a waste of money for this system! Now my husband has a 2017 Highlander and has started to have the same problems as me. Thanks Toyota for the disappointing Bluetooth system!!!!
And yes I did the software update with no success on fixing this issue! I also contacted Toyota with no help except to have my service department at the dealer look at my vehicle and hope it is covered under my warranty!
So disappointed in Toyota!

I have Entune App Suite installed on my phone. While ToyotaEntune works great, every other day if not every day, ToyotaEntune is logged out. It says network error. I log back in and then it works fine. It is quite frustrating and potentially dangerous as when I need it to work in the car, and it is logged out, I have to log back in which I cannot do while driving. Based on other reviews in ToyotaEntune store, this seems to be a common occurrence which leads me to believe that there is a bug in the software. This has been happening for some time now regardless of apple ios software updates. Please look into this. Also, the email contact on the entune support website doesn't allow for State selection and I cannot submit questions.

Thank you for your time.

Often when driving it will notify me that I need to sign into ToyotaEntune . I can’t sign in while driving. Most times I just ignore it. I drive a 2017 Tacoma, which I dearly love. I have never figured out what ToyotaEntune is supposed to do. It came with a manual, so one of these days when I have the time, I may read it, although from all the other reviews, maybe I shouldn’t bother. I am able to play the music in my Apple Library and even ask for directions using my iPhone 11 Pro Max and it all plays over the truck speakers. Maybe it is because I have a later model iPhone as some of the reviews suggest could be the problem. Oh well, my system works for me, although there should be so much more, it is so much better that what I had before with my 2014 Subaru Forester!

ToyotaEntune has been pretty terrible from the start. Even the look and feel of ToyotaEntune is from way old versions of iOS. Has no one informed Toyota that there have been some improvements to the user interface elements that should go into an iOS app since about seven years ago? The most frustrating part of ToyotaEntune is that you lose your login credentials periodically, and for no reason, you must re-login to ToyotaEntune which is hard to do when you're trying to start your car and go somewhere! This is a totally lame implementation of something that should be so simple for Toyota to build into their head unit to make it work much better. I do understand the need for a drivers own iPhone to provide needed Internet data for his or her Toyota vehicle; this could be accomplished in so much more of an elegant way. Basically, Toyota has abandoned ToyotaEntune, leaving it for dead.

ToyotaEntune looks nice and the thought of it syncing up to my car was a wonderful thought, but it didn’t. Entune allowed me to create an acct and I can use/click on some features but that’s it, it goes no where after that. Ex : gps I can put in an address and it will look it up but it will not give me the directions to that location. I’ve been playing around with it for a week now and nothing. Thank goodness for Waze! The radio works perfectly but there is no use for ToyotaEntune , go’s or entune period. I gave it 2 stars because I was able to set up and acct and like the design, was excited to start using it, then failure struck. Bye bye entune, it was a waste!!! Sign Loyal Toyota Buyer 😭😭

I purchased a 2017 Highlander and absolutely LOVE it!! Everything about my Highlander is fantastic! ToyotaEntune isn't so great! It would log me off at really inopportune times. And, it never saved my login info. I'd always tell myself to double check that I'm logged in before I start driving. And then I'd forget. Ok, so that was frustrating. And now, yesterday, Nov 12,2018, I start up and Entune MUST do updates in my car. Hmmm. Ok, I've got a long 3 hour drive, go ahead. Once it finishes, 5 minutes later, my Pandora is gone. WHAT!!?? It's all I currently have set up and listen to. So, ok, not TOO BIG a problem because I can play it off of Bluetooth, right? Except, I can't easily "like" a song, skip, or change stations anymore. I have all my destinations set either in my car or on my Phone (because my car likes to make me double back someone's). So, why do I need ToyotaEntune?

It was working fine until they send an update and messed it up. After the update I’m having intermittent Bluetooth connection, call drops, Bluetooth getting disconnected. Not sure if they tested it before getting it out for public use. This is ruining Toyota’s reputation.

Update: I posted my issues to Toyota on Twitter and they responded and asked me to call a number which I did and they help me to resolve the issue. Now it is working fine. The catch here is when they push a new software update make sure you complete the update at and no drive when it is installing the update. Because that’s what messed up mine.

Tried using ToyotaEntune with my 2016 Corolla. I couldn’t even get passed the sign up section. It kept telling me I had the VIN wrong. Even after I let ToyotaEntune use the camera to scan it. Junk. Absolute junk. It’s like the hired the lowest bidder to produce ToyotaEntune...and it shows.

Also during the sign up section, it didn’t even capitalize the first letter of my name. It didn’t give me the option to auto fill my info except for my email address. It didn’t do password verification so if I had typed it wrong I wouldn’t have known.

Not being able to get passed the sign up section I can’t say anything about the rest of ToyotaEntune . But from what I’ve read in these other reviews, added to my horrid experience trying to sign up and subsequent failing, I’d have to agree with the low opinions previously expressed.

I use this service to listen to Pandora and they are removing it from ToyotaEntune Suite. But, in the laziest way possible. According to the email, you will still see the Pandora button but will receive an error message anytime you go to load it after 11/13. I am so incredibly disappointed at the sheer laziness of leaving the button while discontinuing ToyotaEntune . In addition, the entire point of getting a car with one these features is for safety. What's the point if I can't access ToyotaEntune and have to go into my phone to change stations? I have been a Toyota customer for life, but I called their customer service and didn't even hear I'm sorry from the agent. Worse, they are still advertising this as an available app in Entune in their site even though they know they are removing it. I will never buy a Toyota again.

I have seen kids that write better and reliable apps. How is it possible that entune is not able to keep login credentials when network connection is lost, not even considering the use of fingerprint or face auth?

The developers behind entune should be ashamed for this crappy application which makes the whole experience of driving my Toyota Prius V Four 2017 totally disappointing. If I knew this will happen that I will require an app to get internet connection on my radio and gps system I’d rather buy another car. I believe the willing of track users information is totally ruining the toyota car ownership.

If someone who read this review is considering buying a toyota car think it twice, it is even endangering drivers because you are not able to verify connection until you are driving.

You buy a +30k car with an upgraded audio system and all Toyota does is start downgrading what you bought from day one. There goes ToyotaEntune, there goes that app — I’m expecting to get in one of these days and find the whole radio gone. If only they would put a little effort into making the initial Bluetooth connection more reliable. How in the world can they have designed a system where your phone connects reliably as a phone but not as an audio device! That is some feat of engineering. And you can punch the connect audio device manually till your finger falls off and nothing happens. No, the way you MIGHT connect is by turning the car off and back on. Hope you get done before the light turns green. Of course, nobody (especially Toyota) reads these comments but at least it keeps me from having a screaming fit.

Anyone up for a class action suit for devaluation of our resale value?

Update: junk app keeps logging me out. Why should there even be a login in the first place! What in gods name do they think they are protecting????

ToyotaEntune appears formatted for earlier iphones, maybe iphone 5, and has low functionality & interactions, like an app built for ios 6. Basic actions like viewing eco driving history require 4-digit pin EVERY time, despite the phone being unlocked with Touch ID.

Note: Toyota makes separate apps for different models and years- but Toyota tech support is unaware, just do google searches to find out compatibility.

Toyota puts painfully little effort into the apps, which there are at least three- and apps are specific to models years, and calling Toyota tech support is useless: I was at first told none of the apps will work with my 2017 prius. So I go online and create a “safety connect” account which I don’t want, but this is required for ToyotaEntune . ToyotaEntune doesn’t enable any car-related features, and only shows you login screens for iHeartRadio, Pandora, etc, UNTIL you enter your Safety Connect “contract ID,” which was not supplied with the online account. 2nd call to Toyota takes over 1 hour where I was first told there is no such “contract ID,” eventually
a supervisor supplies it, noting it won’t be enabled for 24 hours. ALSO the number must be formatted with dashes for ToyotaEntune to accept. Only after configuring app with this contract ID does it enable three car-related functions- cabin heat, charging status, and eco record. Even then, the data transfer is slow and the graphics simplistic.