Lifestyle
Tesla Software V9 sneak peek: UI overhaul, Drive on Nav, and arcade Easter Egg
A sneak peek featuring the first images of Tesla’s upcoming Software Version 9 have emerged online, providing a brief teaser of some design elements and features that can be expected in the upcoming update.
The sneak peek images were recently shared on Twitter by Jason Hughes, a notable member of the Tesla community. The uploaded pictures do not provide a full walkthrough of Software V9’s ins and outs, but it does confirm several features that have been speculated for the firmware release. Immediately noticeable is V9’s User Interface, which has been updated to the look and theme of the UI found in the Model 3. The sneak peek featured images from a Model S’s media control unit, and based on the photos, the layout of the new UI works pretty well with the vehicle’s 17″ portrait display.
The images uploaded of Software Version 9 also show that the App Bar, which used to include buttons for the car’s main features, has been removed. Navigation is always displayed as well. Just like the theme of the UI, buttons in the new Software V9 interface are very similar to those found in the Model 3.
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- Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
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- Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
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- Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
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- Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
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- Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
Screenshots of Tesla’s Software Version 9. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
Particularly noteworthy in the sneak peek images were Nav waypoints, as well as a feature for Autopilot called “Drive On Nav.” Very little is known about the Drive On Nav feature, though it does seem to be related to a capability that Elon Musk dubbed as “Integrated Navigation” during the company’s Q2 2018 earnings call.
“Integrated navigation. So, you’d like by the way, a little tip for if you’re driving Model S or X or 3, is if you just tap the Navigate button and just drag down, it will automatically navigate you to your home or work, depending upon where you are. That’s a pretty cool feature,” Musk said.
A screenshot showing Drive On Nav, a new Autopilot feature. [Credit: Jason Hughes/Twitter]
On the more fun side of things, the Software Version 9 sneak peek also included a screenshot of Asteroids, a classic Atari game from 1979, being emulated on the Model S’ media control unit as an Easter Egg. Asteroids would likely be only one of several titles that would be rolled out with Version 9, particularly since Elon Musk noted that Tesla would be including games like Pole Position, Tempest, and Missile Command with the upcoming update. Musk even noted that Pole Position, a popular racing game, could be controlled using the electric car’s actual steering wheel.
While the Software Version 9 sneak peek images are already compelling, Hughes noted in his Twitter updates that the software itself is still under development and that there are more features set to be added in the near future. The Tesla enthusiast further mentioned that what he saw so far in the Model S’ Version 9 software is akin to Tesla’s strategy when it transitioned its fleet from Software V7 to V8, in the way that the initial update mostly included UI changes, followed by feature rollouts in succeeding patches.
Tesla’s Software Version 9 is expected to be one of the most notable updates to the company’s software, particularly since Elon Musk noted that it would include the first of the company’s Full Self-Driving features. The full rollout of Software V9 is expected this September.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
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It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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