How to program steering wheel buttons on an Android head unit
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 are assigning a long press secondary function.
What this gives you
Every button on the wheel doing something useful, and 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 would rather keep both there.
Before you start
- Connector 3 connected, which is the steering wheel controls and factory camera plug.
- The vehicle stationary with the ignition on, because you will 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
Steering wheel control communication comes through Connector 3. If nothing on the wheel registers at all during learning, this plug is the first thing to check, before any setting.
- Open the SWC app
It sits with the other apps on the unit. This is the button learning menu, and it is where the mapping lives rather than in the general settings.
- Select the function on screen first, then press the button
Pick the function you want, then press the matching steering wheel button once. Screen first, wheel second. Doing it the other way round is why some buttons never take.
- Press once, do not hold
A single press is what registers a primary function. Holding the button during this step is what causes a button to learn wrong or not at all.
- Work through every button, including the ones you rarely use
If only one side of the wheel works afterwards, it is almost always that the other side was never mapped. That is 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 does its primary function on a short press and the secondary one on a long press.
- Press Save
The mapping is not held until you save it. Then power the unit off and on and try every button before you put the fascia back.
If it does not work
- Nothing registers on any button: check Connector 3 is fully seated. No communication reaches the unit without it.
- One side works and the other does not: the working side was learned and the other side has not been mapped yet. Go back into the SWC app and do the missing buttons one at a time.
- 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. Do not go chasing steering column earths.
- 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 the factory clock spring is retained. Nothing on the wheel is cut or spliced to make this work.
Related guides
Still need help?
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