How-to Guide
How to Program Steering Wheel Buttons on an Android Head Unit
Quick answer
Open the SWC app, select the function on screen, press the matching steering wheel button once, repeat for every button, then press Save. Press each button once. Holding it is only used when you're assigning a long press secondary function. You can ignore the key button on the wireless module here: the modules ship already paired, and you do all the mapping on the head unit.
What this gives you
Every button on your wheel doing something useful, then doing a second thing on a long press. Volume, track, source, phone answer and hang up, all without taking a hand off the wheel on a road where you'd rather keep both there.
Before you start
- Connector 3 plugged in, that's the steering wheel controls and factory camera plug.
- On a PVS wireless kit, ignore the key button on the module. The transmitter and receiver ship already paired, and you make every button assignment on the head unit.
- The vehicle stationary with the ignition on, because you'll be pressing wheel buttons and watching the screen.
- A list of what you want each button to do, worked out before you start rather than during.
Step by step
- Check Connector 3 is plugged in
Your steering wheel controls talk to the unit through Connector 3. If nothing registers when you press a button during learning, check this plug first, before any setting.
- Open the SWC app
You'll find it with the other apps on the unit. That's the button learning menu, and you do the mapping there rather than in the general settings.
- Select the function on screen first, then press the button
Tap the function you want, then press the matching steering wheel button once. Screen first, wheel second. If you press the wheel button first, that's why some never take.
- Press once, don't hold
A single press is what registers a primary function. If you hold the button during this step, it learns wrong or doesn't learn at all.
- Work through every button, including the ones you rarely use
If only one side of the wheel works afterwards, it's almost always that you never mapped the other side. That's a mapping gap, not a fault in the wheel.
- Add a long press where a button can do two jobs
Tap the plus Long Press option next to a function, then press the steering wheel button. That button then gives you its primary function on a short press and the secondary one on a long press.
- Press Save
The mapping isn't held until you save it. Power the unit off and on, then try every button before you put the fascia back.
If it does not work
- If the key button on the wireless module just flashes and times out, that's normal. The modules ship paired, so it has nothing left to learn. That button only re-pairs a replacement transmitter. You do the mapping here in the SWC app, not on the module.
- If nothing registers when you press a button, check Connector 3 is fully seated. No communication reaches the unit without it.
- If one side of your wheel works and the other doesn't, you learned the working side and haven't mapped the other yet. Go back into the SWC app and do the missing buttons one at a time.
- If your buttons worked, then stopped, on a 70 Series, that points to a weak power feed through the clock spring rather than the head unit or an earth. Don't go chasing steering column earths.
- If a button does the wrong thing, reassign it in the SWC app rather than rewiring anything.
Worth knowing
The two key lines are pins 6 and 7 on Connector 3, orange and orange with a black stripe, and you keep the factory clock spring. You cut and splice nothing on the wheel to make this work.
Still need help?
Tell us your vehicle and what you're seeing on screen, and we can point you to the right step.