Tesla Automations is almost here: 'if this, then that' routines for your car, likely in the Holiday Update

Tesla owners outside China may soon be able to program their own car. A complete English version of Tesla's Automations app has been spotted in recent firmware, hidden behind a feature flag. It lets drivers build simple 'if this, then that' rules, similar to Apple's Shortcuts app on an iPhone.

The feature was enabled on regular, unmodified cars by two Polish developers, Maciej P. Wilczyński and Michał Gapiński, who shared videos on X in mid-October. Wilczyński described the app as fully polished. Tesla has not announced it or given a release date.

How Automations works

Each automation has three parts:

• Trigger: the event that starts the routine, such as a time of day, sunset, buckling a seatbelt or arriving home.
• Conditions (optional): extra checks that must be true, for example that the passenger seat is empty.
• Actions: one or more things the car does, with optional delays in between.

Saved routines appear as cards that can be switched off without deleting them. Triggers and actions are sorted into categories and can be searched.

What you can control

The list found in the software is long. Triggers include time, sunrise and sunset, outside temperature, air quality, seat occupancy and seatbelts, doors and windows, gear and speed, charging state and battery level, location (including Home and Work), navigation details, phone calls and a custom voice phrase.

Actions cover climate settings, seat and steering wheel heating, window and child locks, frunk and trunk, lights, media and volume, navigation, phone calls, acceleration mode, regenerative braking, Wi-Fi and the screen's appearance. The car can also speak a custom announcement.

Examples shown in the videos:

• Saying 'Child Mode' locks the rear doors and the rear windows.
• The car announces 'Gear Shifted' when it starts driving or reversing.
• A reminder to use FSD (Supervised) every time a particular driver buckles up.

The limits

• Screen must be on: automations only run when the center display is active, so they do not work in the background while the car is parked and empty.
• No automations while self-driving: rules cannot fire while Autopilot or FSD is engaged.
• No FSD controls: you cannot start or adjust FSD from a routine. Control of FSD by voice is expected to come through Grok instead.

It is also not certain that every function shown in the hidden version will make it into the public release.

Already live in China

Automations is not brand new. Tesla released it to owners in China with software update 2025.45.32.1 at the start of 2026. Many expected it in the Spring Update for North America, but it did not appear. The English version now found in the code looks like a translation of the Chinese app, which suggests a wider launch is being prepared.

Why it matters

Tesla's screen already has hundreds of settings, but almost all of them must be changed by hand. Automations would let owners set up their own habits once: heat the seats on cold mornings, turn on the dome light after sunset, or set the volume depending on who is in the car.

When to expect it

Tesla watchers see the Holiday Update, the biggest software release of the year and usually rolled out in December, as the most likely moment. That is an expectation, not a Tesla announcement. Which cars will get it, and whether European owners get it at the same time as North America, is also still unknown.