Apple CarPlay in iOS 16 is the best version to date. Here's the reason why.
Adam Ismail
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Each year, your iPhone receives a major update that you likely delay installing for as long as you can. I understand the hesitation—often the updates create more issues than they resolve or improve. However, this year's iOS 26 update, which Apple just rolled out on Monday, proves to be quite beneficial for CarPlay. This is great news for those of us who prefer to avoid our car’s built-in infotainment systems.
Apple, of course, faces restrictions on how much it can enhance CarPlay since automakers only permit basic phone projection to interact with the media experience. If you own a car equipped with CarPlay Ultra—which you probably don’t yet, as only Aston Martin has introduced it so far—you would be able to do much more, such as adjust HVAC settings and customize the instrument cluster.
Regarding the enhancements to basic CarPlay, the first noticeable change is Apple’s Liquid Glass user interface design, which is somewhat like bringing Frutiger Aero into the influencer era. It’s not as bad as it sounds, and I’m starting to get accustomed to it.
You can see the flight tracker at the bottom right. That's a Live Activity from the iPhone's lock screen displayed on the infotainment screen.
Another welcome new feature I noticed after updating my iPhone is that Live Activities now appear on the CarPlay Dashboard page. This is significant for me because the current Yankees score shows up as a Live Activity on my phone's lock screen every night, allowing me to keep track of the latest game they are losing, and now I can access that information while driving.
To the left of that is a new page that you’ll need to enable in your phone’s settings to access. Here, you can pin widgets to CarPlay—though I find the implementation a bit cumbersome on the first day. I can only fit one widget on my GR Corolla's small infotainment screen, and additional widgets can be viewed by swiping up or down. Currently, the options include a weather widget, a calendar widget, and nothing else particularly useful. This could develop into a powerful new feature within CarPlay, but like the iPhone widget experience, developers need to utilize this potential first.
Look—another screen displaying the current weather.
CarPlay’s dedicated settings app—not to be confused with CarPlay’s settings on the iPhone—also includes some new valuable options. A feature called Smart Display Zoom will resize text to better suit your car's screen. This is also significant for my Corolla, as its 8-inch touchscreen had a default text size that was larger than necessary, and now CarPlay can show more information at once.
If the smaller text isn't to your liking, you can try disabling Smart Display Zoom or choosing a larger or bolder font in the settings. CarPlay in iOS 26 also introduces new wallpaper options—which, honestly, are not a big deal—but I like the new red one because it matches my car's exterior.
On the left, Smart Display Zoom is on; on the right, it’s off. While the text and icon size change may seem minor in pictures, it makes a real difference in practice.
Two additional points. When you receive a phone call while using CarPlay, it no longer takes over the entire screen. Instead, it appears as a bar overlaid on your map or music app, which is a nice touch. But what I think will excite many people is that CarPlay will now let you stream videos to your vehicle’s screen over AirPlay, as long as the car isn’t in motion—at least in theory.
I mention this because I couldn't get the feature to work with YouTube or while playing videos from the built-in iOS Photos app. Maybe someone with an Apple TV+ subscription can confirm if it functions there. Apple insiders at 9to5Mac report that developers must enable CarPlay viewing in their software before we can utilize this, so there's likely more to come. Just wait for Google to roll it out as a YouTube Premium feature.
In summary, that’s what iOS 26 offers to CarPlay. It might not appear to be much, but I would argue that the system was already nearly perfect for my needs. Now, if only they could improve Siri’s ability to respond to prompts at any level.
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Apple CarPlay in iOS 16 is the best version to date. Here's the reason why.
The iOS 26 update for CarPlay is not just a superficial enhancement. Here’s what we find most thrilling about it.