Rivian started rolling out the 2025.26 software update to both its Gen 1 and Gen 2 R1 models on Tuesday, with customers reporting major improvements in the infotainment system.
Wassym Bensaid, Rivian‘s Chief Software Officer, said on Wednesday that “more improvements are coming” to the infotainment system.
“More improvements are coming! Thanks for all the feedback,” the executive said in a reply to a X post by user ‘SnazzyLabs,’ who pointed out that the latest software update solved most of the issues he had reported a few weeks ago.
“Rivian’s latest software update is a MASSIVE improvement to the infotainment system,” the user wrote, in addition to a video where he showed the aforementioned bug fixes.
“You can tell this was already in progress when I complained about it a couple weeks ago. So, sorry for jumping the gun lol but it’s WAY better,” he added.
The Rivian owner was referring to a video he posted about a month ago, that was since deleted.
An “update” post followed the reported situation, where ‘SnazzyLabs’ said that “after doing TWO infotainment system reboots and TWO full vehicle reboots, the Rivian system is back to its “normal” performance and massively improved from the prior video.”
However, he still added, “Good? No. Acceptable? Not really. But not as awful as the bugs previously indicated it to be.”
In the release notes, the company specifically thanked the X user for one of the reported bugs last month.
“Fixed an issue that prevented the center display from responding properly to multi-touch gestures after streaming video content protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) (Thanks, u/SnazzyLabs, for the report.),” the note said.
It further improved the “stability, usability, and responsiveness to touch gestures, such as swiping” in Navigation — which integrated Google Maps in mid-July.
Last month, Wassym Bensaid answered Rivian owners who had complained about audio quality that there were “Audio tuning changes that are in the works.”
Bensaid wrote that as a reply on a Reddit post that flagged the “mediocre” quality of the sound when playing music versus how “exceptional” it sounds when watching videos, as an example.
This Wednesday, answering a Reddit user who questioned if the upcoming audio changes had been included in the 2025.26 update, the executive said that “much bigger audio tuning changes are coming in the next update.”
Nearly a year ago, Rivian announced it was partnering with Apple Music to integrate its “premium, immersive Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos.”
Rivian vehicles were standardly equipped with the Meridian audio system until 2023, when the brand switched to an in-house solution.
