How to Check If Tesla has Garage Door Opener and How to Program It

December 3, 2021

By Nuno Cristovao

Teslas have the ability to automatically open your garage door as you’re approaching your home. They can also automatically close it as you’re leaving.

They do this by combining the GPS signal with the HomeLink module that opens your garage door.

How to Tell If Your Tesla Has HomeLink

All Teslas are capable of opening garage doors using HomeLink, however not every Tesla comes equipped with the HomeLink module.

If you have a Model S or Model X, then your car already has the capability to open your garage door.

If you have another model, then whether it’s included in your car will vary. Model 3s included HomeLink only up until Spring of 2019. It then became an option that would be installed after delivery through Tesla service. All Model Ys do not have it installed unless it was installed after delivery.

However, the easiest way to tell if your car has a garage door opener is to check on the car’s display. You can go to Controls > Software then tap on Additional Vehicle Information.

This will bring up a screen that will display several important details about your vehicle and the hardware it includes.

The screen will display which full self-driving computer hardware is installed, your infotainment processor and more. It will also display whether you have the HomeLink garage door opener hardware installed.

Next to ‘Garage door opener’, you will either see ‘Not installed,’ or ‘HomeLink 5 (Opt 2).’ The number may vary, but it will mean that you have the HomeLink module installed and your car is capable of opening garage doors.

Program HomeLink Garage Door Opener

If you have a garage door opener in your Tesla, then you can program the car to automatically open the garage door when you pull up to the house.

You can also operate the doors individually through the car’s interface and even operate the main garage door through the Tesla app.

To program your car you’ll need the remote that came with your garage door opener, or easy access to the garage door motor in your garage.

If you’re programming the car using the button on the garage door opener motor, make sure you have plenty of space and a good step ladder because you’ll need to complete the operation in a certain amount of time. If someone is available to help, that will make the process much easier.

To get started you’ll tap on the HomeLink icon along the top of your Tesla’s screen that looks like a house with an arrow then tap HomeLink Settings.

This brings up the HomeLink screen which allows you to add various garage doors or compatible accessories such as lights or gates.

Start by tapping on Add New HomeLink then enter a name for this garage door, such as ‘Left Garage’ and then tap Create HomeLink.

Standard Mode or D-Mode

You’ll next be presented to set the HomeLink transmit mode. The mode you need to pick will depend on your location and method you’re using to program your car.

Standard Mode - This is the most common mode. If you’re unsure of which to use, you should start with this one, as it’s the simplest to set up. This option requires the use of your garage door remote.

D-Mode - D-mode is usually used in North America. You’ll want to use D-mode if you’re using the ‘Learn’ or ‘Smart’ button on your garage door opener motor.

UR-Mode - UR-mode is similar to D-mode but it’s a standard that’s usually found in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It’ll also require you to use the ‘Learn’ button on your garage door opener motor.

Set your preferred mode and tap Set Mode.

Next, you’ll want to make sure your car is parked in front of your garage. The car uses this location to determine when to open your garage door when arriving home.

Later you’ll then be able to set how many feet before reaching this location should the car send the signal to open your garage.

Programming With Standard Mode

Get ready to program your car and tap Start. You’ll now want to go outside of your car with your garage door remote and point it at the front bumper closer to the passenger side.

Now press and hold the button that opens your garage door on the remote and keep it pressed. It can take up to 30 seconds to program. Your car’s lights will flash when it’s complete. Keep in mind that your garage door will open or close when you do this, so make sure there is nothing in the way.

Once you see your headlights flash, that means the car was successfully able to record the signal from your remote.

When you go back in your vehicle you should see that the recording was completed and you’re prompted to tap next to continue.

If you’re using Standard Mode, the next step will vary depending on whether your remote is QuickTrain compatible or not.

If your remote is QuickTrain compatible or doesn’t use a rolling code then you can tap Continue, if it’s not either of those, then you’ll be required to press the ‘Learn’ button on your garage door opener motor.

If you’re not sure, you can try pressing continue and see if HomeLink works. If it doesn’t work then you know your remote is not QuickTrain compatible.

Programming With D-Mode or UR-Mode

If you’re using D-Mode or UR-Mode to program your car you will need easy access to the garage door opener motor.

The car will ask you to press the Learn or Smart button on the garage door motor. It’ll be a small button that may be behind a cover or door. It’s usually a bright color such as orange, red, yellow or purple, but it can be any color.

After pressing the button you will need to go back to the car in a short period of time and tap continue. This is to prevent unauthorized use of your garage door.

Testing the Button

After programming your garage door the car will ask you to test it.

The car will have you test the garage door button in the car to see if it works and you’ll be given a chance to go back and choose a different option if it didn’t work the first time.

Once you have your garage doors opening from the car and tap save, you can set various options for the garage door.

Auto Fold Mirrors

This option will cause your car to fold its mirrors right before arriving at your garage. Keep in mind this may make backing out of your garage a little more difficult. Only use this option if you need to.

Auto Open When Arriving

Teslas will combine your GPS signal with your HomeLink transmitter and auto open your garage doors as you’re approaching your house.

This is a really convenient feature and I’d recommend having it on as long as your garage door has the safety sensors at the bottom that will prevent it from closing if anything is in the way.

You can also choose the number of feet away from your garage when the car should send the signal to open it.

It’s nice to have your garage door fully open before you get to it so that you don’t need to stop and wait. However, the number of feet that is right for you will depend on your garage door opener and how far away it could receive a signal.

I’d also recommend having your garage door in view so that for those rare times when you come home and the garage door is already open. This will cause your car to send another ‘open’ signal, causing your garage door to start closing.

It's important to understand that the car has no way to know whether your garage door is open or closed, and unfortunately HomeLink simply sends an "open/close" signal, which causes the garage door to open if it’s closed or close if it’s opened. Some caution is necessary, but the feature works well, especially when you’re arriving home.

Tesla recommends only using the auto-open or auto-close features when your garage door is installed with safety sensors along the bottom.

Keep in mind that the car determines the location of your garage door based on where your car was when you programmed the garage door. The location can be reset at any time.

Auto Close When Leaving

This is the opposite of ‘Auto Open when Arriving’. Your car will automatically send a signal to close your garage door when you’re leaving home.

We do need to be cautious with these features as they’re not discrete open and close signals and they just tell the garage door to switch position.

Reset Location

If you weren’t in front of your garage door when you programmed it, then your car has the wrong location for your garage door. Choosing ‘reset location’ when in front of your garage door will cause the car to change the location of your garage to its current position.

You’ll need to do this for each garage door.

Chime for Auto-Open and Auto-Close

On the HomeLink settings screen you can also set whether you’d like the car to chime before auto opening or auto closing the garage door.

This will have the car make a short ding sound before auto opening or auto closing your garage doors. It’s a little reminder that the garage door is open to move. It also gives you a chance to cancel the auto opening or auto closing procedure before it starts. You’ll see the HomeLink menu come up with a cancel button when this happens.

Limited to 3 Garages or Devices

The HomeLink module that Tesla uses is limited to three HomeLink devices. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the module itself and not something that Tesla can change.

Add or Install Garage Door Opener in Your Tesla

If you have a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y that does not have the garage door opener, then you can purchase it separately directly from Tesla.

Unfortunately, it can’t be purchased when you buy the car and it needs to be bought and installed by Tesla service after delivery.

The cost for the parts and installation are $325.

If Tesla offers mobile service in your area then it's a convenient and painless process.

Set Which Garage Door Opens In App

In the Tesla app there is a HomeLink icon that will open your garage door. Unfortunately, this button can only be assigned to one garage door.

There is no way to have your Tesla open the other garage doors programmed in the vehicle, however you can pick which garage door to open when you press the HomeLink icon in the Tesla app.

The following procedure requires you to have Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) or FSD. If you go in your car and go to Controls > Autopilot then tap on Summon you’ll be presented with Summon details.

To choose your garage door, tap HomeLink then pick your garage door. You can then turn HomeLink off again. Keep in mind that if you use Summon with HomeLink enabled then you are telling the car which garage door to open before backing out of the garage.

If you do not have EAP or FSD, then you may have to change the order of your garage doors in order to change the one that opens when pressing the HomeLink icon.

Tesla Robotaxi to Expand Service Area / Geofence This Weekend

July 10, 2025

By Karan Singh

Tesla's Robotaxi initial service area

Not a Tesla App

Last night on X, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will be expanding the service area for its Robotaxi Network pilot in Austin, Texas, this coming weekend. This is the first official confirmation we’ve had of a date for expansion, following news that Tesla is hiring more Vehicle Operators and plans to expand the Robotaxi supervisor ratio in the coming months.

This is a sign of Tesla’s confidence in the Robotaxi pilot program and its current FSD builds.

Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2025

Confirmation of Validation

The announcement confirms the sights we’ve been seeing of Tesla’s engineering validation vehicles focusing on areas outside the initial geofence. This public test shows that Tesla was likely finalizing FSD builds and gathering the necessary safety data to push the boundaries for the service, and this upcoming weekend’s expansion will be the first direct result of that work.

Given the increase in service zone size, this expansion will also likely include the addition of more vehicles to the initial Robotaxi fleet of approximately 20 vehicles. We expect the new number to be anywhere from 30-50 vehicles serving both the original and new areas, combined, based on Tesla’s previously expected rollout schedule.

What to Expect

While the exact new boundaries haven’t been released, it is almost certain that the expansion will include the South Congress Bridge and the downtown core areas of Austin. Expanding into a dense urban zone will include more complex intersections, heavy pedestrian traffic, and a unique road layout. That is a major vote of confidence for Robotaxi FSD’s capabilities.

The expansion will also help Tesla to close the service area gap with Waymo, its primary autonomous competitor in the city. This quick expansion is a sign of just how scalable Tesla’s vision-only approach is, versus Waymo’s arduous and drawn-out mapping processes.

We also expect that with this first service zone expansion, Tesla will continue to invite more people to its Robotaxi Network in the coming weeks. Tesla has already sent out various rounds of events, as they’ll need users to continue using the system. If you’re waiting for an invite, it may be time to start getting excited about the next rollout.

Musk: Grok AI Arriving in Teslas Next Week

July 10, 2025

By Not a Tesla App Staff

Greentheonly / Not a Tesla App

We’ve been hearing about Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, coming to Teslas for almost two years now, but this is finally coming to fruition soon. XAI unveiled Grok 4 last night, but the entire stream didn’t mention Teslas. However, Musk later posted on X that Grok will arrive in Tesla vehicles “by next week.”

Between leaks and the Grok mobile app, there’s a lot we already know about Grok, but there are a few missing pieces that will be cleared when it finally arrives.

Next Week, or Next Next Week?

Musk said that Grok would arrive by next week, meaning it could arrive before then. However, based on how Musk typically states Tesla timelines, there are a few things to consider that give us a better idea of what to expect.

First, whenever Musk posts a Tesla timeline on X, he typically means when it’ll be released to employees and not a public release. Expect this to be the same thing.

Tesla releases software updates to employees first for a final round of testing before starting a gradual release to the public. Sometimes issues are found, especially with FSD updates, and the update needs some fixes before being released publicly. So expect employees to get it by next week, and not necessarily normal Tesla owners.

The second part to this is that Tesla always rolls out their updates gradually, so when it does finally arrive, it’ll only be available on a small percentage of vehicles. Tesla will gradually monitor issues and logs, continuing the rollout as long as no major issues are found.

Which Software Update?

The entire Grok UI was already included in software update 2025.20, but it’s not exposed to users. Typically, a new feature like Grok requires a vehicle update to be added; however, this version may be different, as it’s locked behind a server-side configuration.

The Tesla app was recently updated to support logging in to Grok, so it appears that all or most of the necessary pieces are already in place.

Tesla likely has the ability to enable it for all supported vehicles with a simple switch. However, we feel more confident in it being rolled out in Tesla’s next major update, which is likely to be 2025.24 or 2025.26. Rolling it out in a new update aligns with how Tesla has historically introduced features.

If they turned it on for everyone at the same time, they could be exposing everyone to potential new issues, rather than only a smaller segment of users. While Grok is now well-tested through X and the Grok app, there are several elements that are new in Teslas, likely including the ability to control various vehicle functions, such as opening the glove box or other capabilities that voice commands are currently capable of. The Grok interface in the vehicle is also entirely new and may have some bugs associated with it that will need to be addressed, especially if they impact other features.

What we can likely expect is that Tesla will make some tweaks or bug fixes to Grok with the next major update that weren’t included in update 2025.20 and they’ll begin rolling it out to employees and then customers.

Supported Vehicles

Speaking of supported vehicles, thanks to the behind-the-scenes look at Grok, we have a good idea of the vehicles that will be supported. Tesla uses the same code for most of its vehicles, but then it’s compiled for each type of hardware. However, only the needed code is compiled for each vehicle, meaning that some pieces are left out entirely. Unfortunately, Grok code is not included in Intel software builds, meaning that only AMD Ryzen-based vehicles will receive Grok, at least initially.

We’ve seen Tesla go back and add support for Intel vehicles after it initially released a feature for AMD vehicles. We saw this with the weather radar overlay and several other features in the past. However, Tesla has been developing code with web technologies lately. While this makes development easier, it just doesn’t perform as well on the slower Intel hardware, causing it to be left out. We saw this with the new Dashcam Viewer, which is entirely coded in HTML, CSS, and JS. The new viewer was available on HW3 and HW4 vehicles, but only those that included the Ryzen infotainment processor.

Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2025

What to Expect

There’s a lot we’re expecting in Grok for Teslas. Some people will absolutely love it because it’ll completely transform their drives from a singular experience to feeling like they have a knowledgeable person sitting right next to them. Given the recent controversies surrounding Grok, some people will strongly oppose it. Hopefully, Tesla makes it easy for those users to turn off Grok.

The voice command system, which is activated through the steering wheel, is expected to be replaced with Grok. This will mean that you’ll be able to talk to your vehicle much more naturally, rather than having to remember specific syntax and commands, which should be a major improvement.

We’re personally looking forward to just being able to ask questions that pop into our heads while driving, such as What’s the date of Tesla’s next event, or How many miles away is Mars? Knowledge will be available at the touch of a finger and more accessible than ever.

Grok is also expected to support continuous conversations, meaning that you’ll be able to hold a conversation with it and go back and forth about a certain topic. While there are hints of a wake word in the code, for now, it seems like you’ll press the steering wheel button once to activate it, and then again to turn it off.

For those excited about AI and Grok, this will be one of the biggest additions to Tesla’s software in years, possibly only rivaled by the Dashcam / Sentry Mode feature and FSD Beta.

It shouldn’t be long now before we all have a chance to try it out for ourselves.