Auto A/C not turning on

sirdizzle · Monday at 11:30 AM

I assume this has been discussed before, but couldn't find a thread, so apologies in advance.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get the A/C to turn on when I turn on the fan (like in literally every car I ever owned). I have the setting enabled in the Toyota Climate settings, but A/C doesn't turn on unless I explicitly press the A/C on button. Anyone know??

DLOne · Monday at 11:33 AM

Somewhat related. I turned the AC on for the first time this year, and could not toggle it back off. Any ideas?

PDPete · Monday at 11:58 AM

So... I made a similar post about this a few weeks ago...but now that I've had some more time to drive in warmer weather, what I've found is that regardless of whether you're using the "AUTO" setting or not, it seems that the vehicle will automatically turn on A/C as needed to achieve the desired temperature selected for the climate zone.

I initially found it odd that when I pressed the "A/C" button, an indicator would appear on climate control cluster specifying that A/C was, in fact, enabled...but if the car was turned off, that same indicator would be gone upon restarting the vehicle, leading me to believe that I would have to enable the A/C for each trip... (Because in every other vehicle I've ever owned, the lack of an a/c indicator meant that the air conditioner was not running)

After experimenting a bit, however, I have found that it does blow cold, conditioned air when the temperature is set lower than the outside/ambient temp even if the A/C button is not pressed and the indicator not present.

The only conclusion I have come to is that the A/C button acts more as an over-ride to enable the air conditioning at time when it would NOT otherwise be on, but doesn't really have any effect if the vehicle is already attempting to cool the air to the desired temp, as the air conditioner should already be engaged...if that makes sense?

sirdizzle · 2025-05-13T19:39:37-0500

So I had a 2 hour drive today in 67-70 degree weather. Confirmed I had the Auto A/C button on and set Auto to 64 degrees. Can confirm that it was getting warmer and warmer in the car and couldn't feel the A/C turning on.

When I pressed the A/C button, there was an immediate difference in the air temp coming out. So Im not convinced it turns on automatically on it's own.