If you have an iPhone and a car dashboard that supports this technology, you should be able to use Apple CarPlay on the road. It extends many of your iPhone apps to the larger screen in your vehicle—most notably Apple Maps, Google Maps, and the apps you use to play music and podcasts.
While CarPlay works just fine in its default configuration, you can customize it in a variety of ways, which I’ll explain here. If you spend a lot of time on the go, it makes sense to set up the interface in a way that suits you best. Assuming you’ve made it through the initial connection process, here’s what you can change to meet your needs.
How to customize Apple CarPlay in the car
Down in the bottom corner of the CarPlay interface is an icon that changes shape depending on the screen you’re on, but always looks like some combination of black squares and rectangles. Tap this to switch between the app drawer and the main CarPlay screen with widgets (usually the mapping app and the media app). In the US, this icon is on the left, but if you’re in a right-hand drive car, like in my screenshots, it’s on the right.
To start a specific app in full screen mode, select it in the sidebar on the left or in the app drawer: this gives you more options (such as the ability to zoom in and out of the map on the screen). You can also tap an app in widget view to make it full screen—use the icon in the lower left corner again to return to widgets.
The main widget interface for CarPlay.
Credit: Lifehacker
Tap the Settings app in the app drawer or sidebar (the one that looks like a couple of gears) and you’ll be able to change several aspects of how CarPlay looks and works. It’s the first Focus on driving, which functions as a special “do not disturb” mode when you’re in the car. If you want, you can automatically enable Driving Focus when CarPlay is connected (and configure those settings via your iPhone).
Touch Post messages to control whether Siri reads messages as they arrive on your phone—which you might find useful or an unnecessary distraction. You can find more Siri options below Siri and suggestions from the main settings menu. For example, you can set Siri to send messages you dictate with or without confirmation.
Settings screen in CarPlay.
Credit: Apple
Under, under Look and Wallpaper you can change the way CarPlay looks on the dashboard screen. For example, it’s possible to always have dark mode enabled, and you can choose from 11 different wallpaper options—none of them particularly detailed, but you won’t spend much time looking at them anyway.
The last option in the settings is Show album art, which is a simple toggle for the Now Playing screen (which you’ll find in the app drawer). This Now Playing screen takes over when you’re playing any type of media in any app, giving a uniform look to the playback interface and controls.
How to customize CarPlay on your iPhone
Take out your iPhone (as long as you’re not driving) to further customize CarPlay. For example, tap Concentration and Driving on the iOS settings screen to change the settings for this mode, which can be automatically enabled when you start driving. You can control how notifications are displayed when you’re on the go and set an auto-reply text message if needed.
Select In general and CarPlay from settings in iOS, then select your vehicle and you’ll be able to choose whether or not CarPlay automatically connects when your iPhone is present and that car starts. You might prefer to start CarPlay manually from your car’s dashboard if you don’t want it to be active on every trip.
Configure the driving mode and applications from your iPhone.
Credit: Lifehacker
Choose Customize and you can choose which apps are displayed on the CarPlay dashboard and in which order. This is not a list of all the apps on your iPhone, just the ones that work with CarPlay. You can use the handles on the right to rearrange them and the buttons on the left to add or remove them.
You don’t necessarily want every CarPlay-compatible app on your iPhone to appear in your vehicle. If there are some you’ll never use, then they just add clutter (which you don’t want on a car interface). But some of these apps, including Apple Maps and Messages, cannot be removed.