- Apple introduced upgrades to CarPlay at its WWDC 2025 occasion
- Consists of new look, strategy to take calls with out blocking instructions
Apple followers and builders gathered this week for the corporate’s Worldwide Builders Convention, the place it unveils product updates. This yr’s huge story is a brand new look interface Apple calls Liquid Glass.
Nonetheless, the corporate additionally introduced updates to CarPlay, a system that mirrors your cellphone in your automobile’s display screen so you should utilize some apps whereas driving.
Associated: What’s Apple CarPlay?
Apple says customers interact with CarPlay “over 600 million occasions per day.” It provides simplified interfaces for some apps so you possibly can stream music, get turn-by-turn instructions, and take calls on the street. It can even learn textual content messages and allow you to compose responses with voice instructions.
What It Does Now
- CarPlay can now management good residence units
- Texting responses get simpler via huge icons
We like CarPlay however have been irritated by a number of imperfections. Within the present model, for example, an incoming name notification blocks your view of turn-by-turn instructions.
Apple will repair that with the replace, which retains name notifications in a compact view that retains the map on the display screen.
Apple additionally says “widgets” are coming to CarPlay. A press launch doesn’t clarify what which means, however photographs present icons for controlling linked units like good residence lighting and storage door openers.
A brand new message show enables you to pin sure conversations so you possibly can shortly attain the folks you work together with most by tapping a giant icon with out scrolling. “Tapbacks,” TechRadar explains, allow you to ship a fast emoji response with a single faucet.
CarPlay can even now provide fast textual content updates on Reside Actions tracked in some apps, like notifying you of a flight change when you’re driving to the airport.
The updates might be a part of a brand new working system referred to as iOS 26. In the event you’re an Apple consumer, you’re most likely at present on some model of iOS 18. The corporate isn’t skipping six updates; it’s switching to a brand new system that makes use of the yr in an replace’s title.
The free software program replace might be accessible this fall for iPhone 11 and later.
A Battle for Information
Most automakers now provide CarPlay on virtually all of their 2025 and 2026 vehicles. A rival Google system, Android Auto, is equally widespread.
The corporate lately debuted an enhanced model, CarPlay Extremely, that may seem on future vehicles. It controls all of a automobile’s screens in an effort to see your pace, change local weather management, and even regulate the mirrors in Apple’s interface. Thus far, it’s provided solely on sure 2026 Aston Martin automobiles.
However Basic Motors, in late 2023, introduced plans to part out each the Apple and Android techniques. It’s a part of a rising battle to regulate your driving information.
Programs like CarPlay give tech corporations entry to immense quantities of knowledge about your journey and leisure preferences. Some automobile corporations would moderately hold that for their very own functions.
Earlier this yr, GM agreed to a 5-year ban on promoting driver information for revenue. A latest report from a pair of U.S. senators discovered that many different automakers promote drivers’ information.
