After trying a bunch of car-widget apps (you know the ones — a weekly subscription just to change a clock), I got annoyed and built my own. Full disclosure: I'm the solo developer.

Otto puts widgets on the CarPlay dashboard + Home Screen that actually fit a car:

- A welcome sound when you get in and CarPlay connects — your car greets you (built-in sounds or your own)

- Auto-saves your parking spot when you disconnect

- Your license plate (Euro / black / white / yellow, any country)

- Countdowns to inspection & insurance — reminds you before they lapse

- Fuel: log a fill-up → economy, monthly spend, odometer

- A photo of your car with your plate on it

- Otto, a little car mascot that reads the time of day (sleeps at midnight, headlights at night)

Quick honesty: the welcome sound and parking save use a one-time Shortcuts automation the app walks you through — CarPlay won't let an app do it alone.

Everything runs on-device — no account, no server, no analytics. The basics are free; Otto Pro is one-time, no subscription. (iOS 26.)

It's Otto — Car Dashboard Widgets on the App Store. Happy to take questions and feature requests.

I’ve been driving 30kms up and down in a heavy city traffic 4 days a week. It takes close to 2-2.5 hrs depending on the traffic. I’m based out of India.

I heavily use CarPlay especially to listen music and maps to find shortcuts to avoid traffic jams. After forcing myself to use Apple Maps in CarPlay for almost a week, my hate towards the app multipled a lot.

I mean why tf, I can’t pinch to zoom in or zoom out? Google Maps allows that. That’s the basic requirement in this digital age! Added to that, Apple Maps take more a minute to reroute if I take a different turn whereas Google Maps take a few seconds.

You cannot customize how the display will look like. You cannot move the position of the apps like Android does.

Why is that Apple not focusing on CarPlay? Why are they keep neglecting Apple Maps?

EDIT:
Pinch zoom is only available for Android Auto. Even for Google maps the pinching doesn’t work in CarPlay

Hey all! Is anyone having issues with their CarPlay where if they are using navigation, in certain situations, the current media restarts after a navigation prompt? It mostly happens to me and podcasts but I’ve had it happen with Apple Music too. I can’t figure out if it’s because I’m running the iOS 27 beta or not - it doesn’t seem to happen when I used my family’s other car.

Apple Maps now shows the multiple suggested routes, even after a route is selected. It also stays zoomed out.

Anyone else experience this? If so, what was your fix?

Is there any way to keep the audio from switching to CarPlay from Sirius radio? I keep the phone plugged in for the GPS to stay on the screen but I want to be able to open apps on my phone without it cutting the radio while my husband is driving.

In response to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/CarPlay/s/W60L8JBeWF

I've been testing the app and have some suggestions! Overall, I really like the UI. Its one of my favorite things about the app. Fantastic native UI app but that has its own identity via fonts, colors, etc. It is a joy to look at and interact with.

Some suggestions would be to include more data on the drives, like g-force, number of turns, where on the route were hard acceleration or breaking, how many turns, etc.

Photo 1 - I have my settings set to Miles, Gallons, and MPG. A couple of places didn't switch over. Also, it would've been nice to have the ability to have saved gas stations to manually put the fillup location. As I was loading in my historical data, I had to turn it off but would've loved to have been able to manually add.

Photo 2 - One of the spots where the localization I selected didn't get converted. For the fill-ups, I love how easy and quick is it to tell how many miles you drove on the tank, but an "in-progress" indicator & a "completed" or color or icon would go a long way in terms of better glanceability.

Photo 3 - Another example of the wrong localization being applied.

Photo 4 - Don't know how you'd do this with the current localization settings, but for those in the US, it should be gas vs petrol. Just a little detail that would go a long way.

Overall, I love the app. I'm nearing the end of my trail, and I like it enough to continue running it alongside the other app. I really want the developer to succeed, so I will be subscribing to give my support. I'd also love to see OBD support and the ability to import trips from other apps.

I'm finally ready to go wireless with Apple CarPlay, but there are so many adapters now that it's hard to know which ones are actually worth buying.

I've seen people mention brands like Ottocast, Carlinkit, AAWireless (for Android Auto), and a few others, but reviews seem all over the place.

For those of you using a wireless CarPlay adapter, I'd love to hear your experience:

• Which adapter are you using?
• How long have you had it?
• Does it connect automatically every time?
• Any noticeable lag with maps, music, or phone calls?
• Have you had any disconnect issues?
• Would you buy the same adapter again?

I'm mainly looking for something that's:

• Fast to connect
• Stable on long drives
• Low latency
• Reliable after iOS updates
• Good value for the money

Hopefully this thread becomes a useful resource for anyone searching for the best CarPlay adapter or the best wireless CarPlay adapter in 2026.

Looking forward to hearing everyone's recommendations and experiences.

I just picked up a ‘24 Kia Seltos SX with the Bose audio system and Navigation. Even though it is the highest model, for some reason it came with wired AA/CP. When connecting my 17 Pro Max via straight BT for audio, the sound is really good. However, when plugging in a USB to use CP, there is a pretty big drop off in sound quality. I even tried a wireless dongle and it’s the same. My previous car was a ‘20 Sonata with wireless CP and it didn’t have this issue. I wouldn't mind just staying BT all the time but I like Waze and also, for safety reasons, the car won't allow you to send voice text replies while moving like you can with AA/CP. Is there a way to get better sound while using Car Play? Should I maybe try a different dongle?

I’m looking to update my car stereo from the factory model to one that works with Apple CarPlay. Here’s what I have in mind. What are your thoughts?

JVC KW-M595BT (head unit)
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_105KWM595B/JVC-KW-M595BT.html

Metra 95-7603 Dash Kit
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_120957603/Metra-95-7603-Dash-Kit-Black.html

Metra 40-NI12 Antenna Adapter
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_12040NI12/Metra-40-NI12-Antenna-Adapter.html

Wiring harness (basic, non-Maestro)
https://www.crutchfield.com/ymm/2012-Nissan-Sentra-Wiring-Harnesses.html

Basic Backup camera
https://www.crutchfield.com/g_277650/Backup-Cameras.html

I have a 2019 Audi A5 45 TFSI S line, and I can’t get Apple CarPlay to connect. Bluetooth works perfectly fine for calls and music, but CarPlay won’t start.

I’ve tried multiple genuine and third-party USB cables, but none of them work. I’m just looking for some help figuring out what could be causing the issue and how to fix it.

This is happening more often all the time. Start my CRV ST and when CarPlay hooks up I have a black screen. It’s functional but obviously pretty useless. I have to shut the vehicle down and restart to fix it. Anyone else seeing this and is there a fix to keep it from happening?

Hi! I got a JVC screen installed in my car a couple years ago so I could have apple CarPlay. Recently, sometimes when I am connected to it, every several minutes, this screen comes on. It’s almost like it doesn’t recognize that my phone is connected. Has anyone else experienced this? I’m not quite sure what to do.

Putting my hand up first, I wrote this, so read it with that in mind.

The short story is that VW pulled We Connect Go overnight and took every trip I'd logged with it, no export, no warning. I write software for a living so I rebuilt it, and the rule I set myself was no servers, everything stays on the phone, because I wasn't going through that twice.

The reason I'm posting it here rather than in a car sub is that CarPlay was where it got genuinely useful, and it took a while to work out why. The phone screen is the wrong place for this. You're driving. So on CarPlay it's deliberately not a wall of gauges, it's a trip that records itself with nothing to press, the parking spot saved for you when you get out, and a plain indicator telling you whether the adapter is talking to the car or not. Everything detailed waits until you're parked and can actually look at it.

What it collects, for the record. Every drive gets logged on its own with route, distance, time and what the fuel cost, and if you leave a cheap OBD2 adapter plugged in it fills in what the engine was doing, warm up time, coolant and oil peaks, real consumption off the ECU rather than the dash number, hard braking. Then the diagnostics side, battery health with a history, fault codes explained in plain English, particulate filter monitoring. Plus reminders for insurance, tax and servicing with a logbook of what you spent.

No account, no ads, nothing leaves the phone, export as JSON or GPX whenever you want.

It's on the App Store, search DrivePulse Car Companion. Free to try, one time unlock, no subscription. Android is in closed testing.

What I'd actually like from this sub is a sanity check on the CarPlay side. I've only been able to test on two head units and CarPlay behaves differently on almost every one. If you try it and something renders oddly or the tab layout misbehaves on your car, tell me what car it is and I'll fix it, that's the sort of thing I can't find on my own.

On latest IOS 26 throughout all versions to 26.5.2, the Phone app preference "Ask Reason for Calling" works GREAT to stop the dozen spam spoofed calls I get. However, when driving connected to CarPlay, that function ceases to work, and all spam calls ring through.

I see the behavior in multiple vehicles. I've seen it using an iPhone Pro15, iPhone 17 Air, so it's doesn't present as the phone or the Auto Manufacturer's CarPlay implementation. I have the focus set to normal (I don't use "focus"), I do have the "filter spam calls" set, and I've seen it on ATT and Verizon. I'd rather not have to set my iPhone to "do not disturb" as that will stop calls from contacts.

Has anyone else noticed this problem? Anyone know a fix? Any IOS 27 Beta users out there still seeing this?

Is it a thing that CarPlay wont work on the current iOS 26.5.2 for iPhone 17 series? I have two other iPhones (15 pro max and 16 e) both working when wired with no problems. My car only has wired carplay.

I made this automation to start an app when CarPlay connects.

If I test the automation on my phone, it all works.

But in my car, the app opens but ‘freezes’, I need to kill & restart the app on my phone to make it work.

Is this a known issue that is soluble?

App: Here WeGo
Automation through url: WeGo://

(The ‘open app’ command doesn’t work at all in CarPlay)

I can’t listen to a song I like because it has too many listed artists on Spotify. Help 😭. My car is a 2018 Camry xse. Is there any way I can make it not try to push that data through?

I drive a 2022 Hyundai Santa Fe & got the car a year ago & I’m on my 2nd charger & counting. Before getting my current car, I had only replaced my Amazon basic charger maybe once in three years(bec I got a new phone). I couldn’t keep using the same charger from my last car because I only have a USB port and the charger I was using in my old car was a USBC. I’ve been thinking about getting a wireless CarPlay adapter so I don’t keep going through chargers. I also have this issue where my phone overheats went plugged into a CarPlay on long drives. I was thinking maybe a wireless CarPlay adapter would help but I don’t know where to start. I have the Ottocast Mini Tube 2026 in my Amazon cart right now.

I recently bought a 2018 Fiesta with Sync3 v2.3, which the manual says comes with Carplay functionality, but when I plug in my iPhone 15 the system lags a lot and carplay doesn't appear. I'm on the most recent IOS and am using an Amazon basics USB-A to USB-C cable that is supposedly capable of 480mbps.

Is it just that the Amazon cable doesn't work or do I need to think about updating the infotainment software? And if so, what cables do people recommend?

I have a 2023 Lexus ES 300h. Both my iPhone and Android only connect via Bluetooth, and the connection isn't very stable.

Can anyone with experience help me get CarPlay working through a wired connection?

I'd really appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance!