How to Defrost a Tesla: Defrost Button, Heated Mirrors and Defrost Charge Port

January 29, 2024

By Not a Tesla App Staff

You can find the defrost button in the climate menu

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Like most vehicles, dealing with snow and ice on your Tesla can be challenging, especially during the colder months. Here are some essential winter tips and techniques to defrost your car and ensure your vehicle is ready for a safe drive.

Defrost From The Tesla App

One of the best parts of owning an EV is preheating the cabin before you get in

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Before you even get to your vehicle, it's a great idea to preheat the cabin and turn on the defroster. Your Tesla's cabin will warm up extremely quickly thanks to a dedicated heater. Unlike internal combustion vehicles, the engine doesn't need to warm up before the vehicle starts producing heat. Teslas will start warming up immediately and it often only takes a few minutes to warm up the cabin to a comfortable temperature.

To start the climate system from the Tesla app, just tap the Fan icon directly underneath the vehicle. Those icons can be customized as well (see more below). Alternatively, you can scroll down to the Climate section and activate the climate system from there.

To start defrosting your vehicle, you can also add the Defrost icon to the quick actions icons underneath the vehicle model, or you can go into the Climate section.

Simply slide up the panel at the bottom of the screen to reveal additional options, which include Defrost Car, Bioweapon Defense Mode (if equipped), Camp Mode, and Dog Mode.

Tesla Defrost Button

Finding the defrost buttons in the vehicle is a little less obvious, and an area that Tesla can improve. However, it's crucial to use them if snow is building up on your windshield while driving.

To activate the front windshield defroster tap on the climate temperature at the bottom of the screen, then tap on the curved "Defrost" icon twice. The icon is placed to the right of the 'Auto' button on the climate screen.

Tapping the button once will activate the 'Defog' function and turn the icon blue. You'll want to tap it again so that it turns red and the vehicle starts aiming heat toward the windshield.

To start the rear defroster, tap on the rectangular defrost icon next to the AC icon. Unlike the front defroster, the rear defroster only has a heat option.

Differences Between Defrost Button In the App and the Car

The defrost button in the app works slightly differently than the button in the vehicle. When activating the defrost option in the app, the vehicle will turn on the front and rear defrosters, as well as set the cabin temperature to the max, whereas in the vehicle, the front defrost button will only turn on the front defroster.

There is currently no way to turn on the front defogger from the app, but you can manually activate the climate system with a lower temperature to help defog the vehicle.

Turn On Heated Mirrors

All Tesla models include heated mirrors, but there isn't a separate button to activate them. Instead, to turn on your heated mirrors, you'll want to activate the rear defroster, which will automatically activate both the rear defrost and your heated mirrors.

Defrost Charge Port

The charge port heater is also activated when you turn on the rear defrost button in the vehicle or when you activate defrost from the Tesla app.

Customize Vehicle's App Icons

Tap and hold any icon to customize the bottom row of apps

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For quicker access to the vehicle's defrost buttons, you can add them to the row of icons at the bottom of the screen.

To customize the apps that appear along the bottom, simply tap and hold one of the icons until the 'All Apps' menu shows up with all available apps.

You can then drag the defrost button or any others to the bottom bar. Tap 'Done' above the apps menu to exit the customization mode.

Customize Tesla App Quick Actions

You can add a fifth favorite icon to the Tesla app

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Similar to adding the Defrost icon to your vehicle's bottom bar, you can tap and hold any of the icons underneath your vehicle's 3D model to customize which options you want to have quick access to.

After tapping and holding any of the icons, you'll be presented with a table of available options. You can then drag any items to the quick access area.

Although Tesla defaults to only showing four favorite actions, you can squeeze in a fifth icon. Just follow our steps in 'How to Add a Fifth App Icon.'

Clearing Snow & Ice

If you preheated your vehicle, snow should be fairly easy to remove from the top of your vehicle. Thanks to the glass roof in most Teslas, the vehicle may have melted most of the snow off the top of the vehicle for you.

Use a soft brush or snow scraper to gently remove any remaining snow from the windshield, rear window, side mirrors, and lights. Avoid using hot water, as it can crack your windows.

Understanding how to defrost your Tesla and customize its settings ensures a safe and comfortable drive during some of the most crucial drives. Being able to remotely defrost or warm up your vehicle, even if it's in an enclosed area is easily one of the best parts of owning an EV. Take advantage of it and stay warm!

Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

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Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

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Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

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You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

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One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.