15 Mercedes Benz MBUX Tips and Tricks

Mar 8, 2019
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MBUX stands for Mercedes-Benz User Experience which is the latest Mercedes-Benz infotainment system and what I thought we'd do is go through some tips and tricks on just that. Now some of these you may already know but some of these are also some of my favorites and hidden ones you might not know about.

How to know that you have an MBUX system in your Mercedes?

Just say Hey Mercedes and if you have an MBUX system then you will get a response back from your Mercedes and that means you have the MBUX system in your car.



  1. Profiles in Mercedes MBUX
  2. How to setup Dual Phones in your Mercedes?
  3. Volume and Mute Button
  4. Radio Text Information
  5. MBUX Reorganise the home screen
  6. Changing the MBUX theme
  7. Instrument Cluster Dials
  8. Mercedes me
  9. Share Internet in the Car
  10. Switch off Hey Mercedes
  11. Parking Sensor Volume
  12. P Button NAVI
  13. Commuter Route
  14. Traffic Lights on Augmented Reality
  15. Speed Limits to Cruise Control / Limiter

1. Profiles in Mercedes MBUX

Now I thought it might be best to start with profiles on the MBUX system so profiles are basically if you imagine like a Windows computer or a Mac or something like that. You probably have your own login with your own password. It is kind of similar to this where you basically have different logins and you have all of your own settings the way you want them on each profile but of course, there's no password.

So I have a profile here at the moment and it will basically save all of my settings the way I like them so say I ended up changing a few icons around or changing the theme, displays, ambient light, radio stations etc.

All of those things are saved on my specific profile and say another person came along they can create their own profile and have their own settings you can do this for up to seven people.

1.1 How to create a profile in Mercedes MBUX?

To create a profile it's really easy you basically just go to the home screen so on mbux there's a little picture of the house in the top right-hand corner of the left screen just go here and then next to it will be a picture of a person and potentially even your name if you've already programmed in one profile just tap on that one and then you'll be able to create the profiles here and set them up the way you'd like them up.



2. How to set up Dual Phones in your Mercedes?

Next is dual phone capability the ability to connect two phones to the car system itself. Now the way this works is you connect them via Bluetooth on the phone screen which is on the main home screen just tap the phone and you may notice at the top there's "Phone 1" & then next to it there's "Phone 2" so you can connect both up to take incoming calls pretty much at the same time.

So if either phone rings once they're both connected you answer and hang up on the steering wheel for either phone! And if you want to phone out you simply select phone one or phone two and then select the phone book so it's quite clever!

Say you drove the car on your own and you had a personal phone and maybe a work phone you can connect two without
having to switch between the two to take an incoming call is basically so pretty clever!




3. Volume and Mute Button

Next, up guys are the volume button which is just located here and just down there in the middle now of course you can swipe this up and down to control the volume button as we all know.

But did you know it's also a button as well?

So if you press the button in you'll actually mute! So it saves you having to keep swiping down like this to turn the volume down simply just press the button in and it will mute it and also while we're on that topic if the Sat Nav's talking to you and you don't want her
talking for that journey just press the mute button as she's talking and it'll mute her!


4. Radio Text Information

Next, up guys are the radio text information so normally when you're on a radio station it will look a bit like this. But did you know that you can also bring up the name of the song that's playing as long as the radio station is transmitting it.

So to do this quite simply go to settings on the bottom right, then go to general and you'll find an option here called "Radio Text Information" just click Ok on that one and now you'll find that the radio text of the name of the song it's playing will show just beneath the radio station name.



5. MBUX Reorganise the home screen

My next Tip &Trick is reordering the home screen so say for example that you always go to media which is just located over here and you Bluetooth the music from your phone to the car.

If you go back to the home screen you can actually put your finger onto the screen and hold and move these icons around and put them in any order that you fancy. So maybe you wanted a phone then media and then maybe you want radio just to the left of that.

You can personalize the home screen exactly the way you'd like it.


6. Changing the MBUX theme

Next up we've got to change the Theme on MBUX so to do this you can basically just navigate on the left screen to a thing called "Settings" and then in here you'll want to go to "System" on the far right-hand side and then go to "Styles & Display".

In here you will have one two or maybe even three options to change. In this particular car, there are three themes so you have -

  1. Classic
  2. Sport
  3. Progressive

Classic - is what you see here with the kind of turquoise blue theme,

Sport - You then have kind of a bit of dark green with yellow and red.

Progressive - Goes all digital with a bit of blue and a slight bit of orange in the theme as well.



7. Instrument Cluster Dials

And while we're on the topic of changing the themes you can also change the content of the instrument cluster. The instrument cluster is the one that's behind the steering wheel and you can change on cars with the big screen on the left-hand side the center and the right-hand side and to do this you'll be using the steering wheel here.

So you just swipe this one left and right to view each part of the dashboard and say I want to change the left side I'm just going to move the cursor over to the left-hand side just by swiping and now swipe up and down and you can view different things on this dial.

Say I wanted to have my music playing on the left there if I swipe that to the right I can now change the middle part so I can change this and put the speed nice and big in the middle and then if I go to the right you can then view and change things over here so let's have maybe the sat nav over there.

So you can change this as well as the themes to really personalize and choose what you want behind the wheel.


8. Mercedes me

Next up we've got Mercedes me now all-new Mercedes-Benz over the past few years do have Mercedes me but it's extremely important that it's linked to your Mercedes me ID (Mercedes me account).

This enables your Live Traffic to work and of course, get Map Updates and it does do some extra things via an app as well
but it's not free on every car so it's best again to check the specification of this.



9. Share Internet in the Car

And while we're on the topic of Mercedes me you can also get the car to send internet to a device so things like maybe a phone or a tablet or something on a road trip.

It's mainly used for road trips or potentially with friends or family while you're driving. The car can send internet to their device.


10. Switch off Hey Mercedes

My next tip & trick is extremely useful if you have small children in the car and they might just catch on to the fact that the car has a voice assistant in the car called "Hey Mercedes!"

Car Voice: How may I help you? Now if you're trying to drive that might be quite annoying when they keep on saying the "M Word" so what you can do is navigate all the way to "Settings" on the far right-hand side.

Go to "System" then go to "Linguatronic".In here you can switch off the activation of the phrase so if I switch this off I can now say: "Hi Mercedes!" or "Hey Mercedes!"

And nothing will come up in the car but don't worry the feature's not completely switched off. Say you're driving down the road and you have the sat nav on and you still want to use that feature without saying the word because you've switched it off.

On the left side of the steering wheel there's a picture of a voice just nudge this up and you'll get the same functionality as you had before.


11. Parking Sensor Volume

Now one of the most useful tips & Tricks is adjusting the parking sensor volume and pitch you can also adjust when it beeps at you.

So to do this go all the way to "Settings" on the far right-hand side then go to a menu called "Assistance" usually the second one along at the very very top here.

In here you can go to "Camera & Parking" and just scroll down a tiny bit you can change the volume of the sensors.

Car: Beeping

You can adjust these up to +5 just in case you need to make them a little bit louder.

Car: Beeping

On top of this as well you can also change the pitch.

Car: Lower Beeping

Another feature that I'd strongly recommend is a thing called: "Warn early all round"

And it does exactly what it says.
Normally by default, the system is off and what this does is when you get near an object the sensors will start beeping literally last-second probably about this far away from an object.

If you have this enabled it will actually be a few meters further back from that so it gives you a bit more notice.


12. P Button NAVI

My next Tip & Trick actually relates to the Sat Nav so let's say that you are navigating in a city that you don't know. On the left-hand side, there's actually a picture of a "P" which indicates car par.

If you press this it will actually show you all the car parks nearby and rather cleverly as well it will even show you arrows on the left pointing in which direction they are.

Simply select one and it will show you where it is on the map. On top of this as well if you happen to be on reserve fuel you can also find a picture of a fuel pump over here and you can select this and it'll show you all the nearby fuel stations.


13. Commuter Route

Next up we've got a thing called "Commuter Route" now what this does is automatically enable the sat nav silently in the background showing you all the nearby traffic and the best route to take to get to work.

Now, this happens automatically if you've enabled this feature but it does require you to have your home and workplaces set up in the sat nav as well as logged into your own profile.

To enable "Commuter Route" simply go to "Navigation" then go across to Settings. And then go down to "Advanced", in here you'll be looking for a thing called "Route" and then scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see "Activate Commuter Route".

Once this is enabled simply just make sure you've got your home and workplaces set up in the sat nav and saved as your favorites. Every day when you go to work the sat nav will automatically start and show you the arrival time and the best way to get to work but the best thing about this is that it doesn't enable the voice when it's on this model so it simply shows you the route in the background without the sat nav talking.


14. Traffic Lights on Augmented Reality

For this next Tip & Trick, you'll need a thing called "Augmented Reality" and what Augmented. Reality does is basically show you a live camera feed of the road ahead in front of you on the screen and when you get to a turning on your sat nav it will actually render a blue arrow on the live camera feed showing you exactly where to go. It's quite clever but there is a Tip & Trick for the people who have that feature.


15. Speed Limits to Cruise Control / Limiter

And my final Tip & Trick today guys is a hidden feature found on the Cruise Control and Speed Limiter on all new Mercedes-Benz.

This applies to all new Mercedes-Benz that have the Cruise Control and Speed Limiter on the right-hand side of the steering wheel. And for those of you that don't know on these three buttons from left to right.

The left-hand side does the cruise control and limiter so you select what you want first, the middle one that says set enables you to turn that feature on after you've chosen what you want and the right time one is resumed and cancel depending if you nudge up or down.

But there is a hidden feature on here if you look really closely at the far right-hand button it says "RES" for Resume but then it says forward slash and it looks like it's a picture of a traffic sign and what this does is when you have Traffic Sign Assist enabled on the car and you have your Sat Nav showing you a speed limit on the screens. When you've driven past that speed limit and you press up twice it will actually put the cruise control or limiter to the speed limit that the car has detected on the road.

So what this symbol over here refers to is basically cruise control or limiter for the speed limit on the road so you can actually get it to copy from the car itself to the cruise control or limiter very very very clever!