[General Questions and Answers] KryptosXLayer2:
Nexus / Play Edition Devices - Keyguard => Home Button and Top of Screen Unresponsive

When I installed 5.1.1 on my Nexus 7 mounted in my car, I noticed a weird bug with Car Mode Control being activated - the home button would freeze up the screen, locking it on an all black screen, and the status bar along with another 10% from the top of the screen was unresponsive to touch. Now, I know there are issues with Nexus devices running Car Mode apps, but without reinventing the wheel (or at least having to code a ton more stuff into Tasker), it's the easiest way for me to send up accompanying things, like Car Home Ultra and activating tethering, etc.

But this is just obnoxious. I can barely get the search bar to work on Google Maps, I have to hit just the very bottom of the bar to get it to open up the recent searches and allow me to type, and most 3-dot menus cannot be hit anymore. When I got my Moto X Pure, I noticed the same thing was happening, so it wasn't A) the Nexus 7, B) Car Home Ultra, C) at one point I even considered it was Nova Launcher, but rather D) just being in Car Mode. The MXPE comes out of this state easily enough with doing a screen off and back on, but the N7 does not - I either have to disable wifi tethering which disables car mode on the N7 via a Tasker task, or restart it in some extreme cases. I have Car Home Ultra on my N7 but not my MXPE, so the suggestion that it has something to do with a bug in the home button override of Car Home Ultra doesn't hold water, unfortunately (thought of that as the culprit already too).

I think this may be a "safety feature" of Nexus / PE devices that if car mode is activated, you can touch certain things and go back home, but if I can't pull down the status bar, I can't set car mode off unless I turn off my car, which kills Bluetooth and my Tasker task to keep my phone in car mode when connected to the car's BT. NOT ideal for someone who drives 1,000+ miles per week for work and needs to check and send emails while I'm stopped waiting for my next assignment to start (insurance related career). I find it even more absurd that not only is the status bar blocked from access, but all apps just below that as well, including the search bar on Google Maps as I said already. How am I even supposed to search for the next destination without being able to access that bar easily?

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TD;LR - Nexus and Play Edition devices don't like Car Mode being forced on them through apps that turn on car mode, it makes them unresponsive to certain parts of the screen and doesn't allow the home button to work, is there any way to enable car mode without having to build a Tasker task that does what car mode does for me?

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EDIT - Figured it out.... I had Tasker setting Keyguard Off instead of using Secure Settings to clear password when connected to the car's Bluetooth as detailed here. I've read previously that setting the keyguard off has had adverse reactions inside Android, but I didn't connect the dots here, these are the issues that occur when you set keyguard off! So yes, using Secure Settings to clear password works much better and doesn't produce these crazy bugs.