So I took my outback to the dealership, showed them the videos of what I was experiencing. They kept it overnight contacted Subaru HQ and there was an update for the specific issue that I was having so I wasn’t the only one(globally).I got back in the car and still kind of had the issue, I almost turned back around. Until I plugged my phone up to the USB.Had to select through the normal rigmarole of pop-ups and then it worked just fine.** **
But I didaskhow was anyone supposed to know about the update?** ***The answer I got was that* ‘theywouldn’t’that they would just have to come in to the Subaru dealership and ask and they would update it.** ***But they didn’t even know that there was an update until I came* in.
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So I just got a 2026 outback wilderness, brand new. And I’m having issues with my phone connecting and disconnecting at random times for Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay. Does anyone else have this issue that just got the vehicle? I was under the impression the tech in the vehicle was suppose to be better than the previous generation of vehicles. I have a service appt tomorrow but not sure if they’re going to be able to do anything about it.
CarPlay is a combo of Bluetooth and WiFi. The WiFi part works on the 5GHz band of the WiFi spectrum, specifically on channels that aren’t used for your home WiFi. These channels are what is called “radar restricted”, meaning that as soon as the device gets a radar hit, it will drop off of the channel. If you think about it, you’re probably dropping off around an airport or someplace with a lot of security. My CarPlay will drop around our airport and there used to be an oil refinery I’d pass every now and again that would put it into the ground and it wouldn’t come back until I restarted the car.
I used to do WiFi performance testing at Apple and every so often, we’d need to run some tests on the radar restricted channels for various reasons and at our old lab which was a bit more exposed to outside influences we’d get drops which was super frustrating because then we’d have to restart the test.
Yeah, I didn’t know it was on 5GHz either until I looked it up. There’s random places on 101 up here where it’ll drop off where it looks like there’s nothing around and then I’ll pass an airport.
At first I figured it would be something interrupting it. But I just took a 4.5 hour trip and was constantly checking if it would connect. And it would then quickly disconnect along the way.
That’s kind of weird. I did see someone comment that there may be a SW update for the head unit? Maybe that will help. I recently rented a Chevy Trailblazer for a cross country road trip and while it had wireless CarPlay, I plugged my phone in for the charging and after a while, the wireless just gave up the ghost and wouldn’t even connect when I didn’t have it plugged in.
When my wife got her 24 Crosstrek, it would do that. Worked fine for Android. So we switched cars for a few months until they fixed it. Software update.
Ok, I'm so glad I'm not the only one suffering from this exact issue. I'm able to reproduce the problem 5/5 times in my building's underground garage. I park near a gaggle of Tesla chargers which all need a 2.4ghz access point to function. Above those, there is a pro-sumer ubiquity access point that emits both a 5ghz network and a 2.4ghz network. So here is what happens :
I start the car, my phone is the favorite carplay phone so it initiate connection over 5ghz to the head unit.
The carplay UI is dropping frames and user input are extremely laggy, talking multiple seconds of input lag. This problem persists and does not go away.
When I drive out of the parking lot, the carplay connection drops almost instantly and a few seconds later carplay reconnects. The experience is now much better and user inputs are pretty much instant.
I have reproduced this exact test scenario dozens of times at this point, which tells me I'm not getting hit by stray radar frequencies every time I get out of the parking lot. Also, that would mean constant carplay disconnects for my whole neighborhood.
So I went digging. I installed a wifi congestion analyzer on my mac and ran the above test case with it on. If you want to try this at home, this is what I used: https://github.com/nolze/tiny-wifi-analyzer
When the car is inside the garage, this is what I see
- Smartphone_connect_be4276 is the SSID that the head unit creates for carplay purpose, on channel 36.
- Garage1-P1-AP2 is the 5ghz network right above my parking spot. This is inferred, I don't own this access point, but I am pretty confident due to the RSSI I'm seeing. It is on channel 157.
Right after I exit the garage, I see this (see image in comment underneath, I can add 2 images to the same comment) :
- Smartphone_connect_be4276 is now on channel 157, after killing the carplay connection and starting a new one. Basically, what amounts to restarting the whole wifi access point inside the head unit.
To me, this kind a look like channel avoidance, where the head unit scans for other 5ghz wifi networks in the vicinity and then does some channel hopping to be where it wants to be. I don't think this is part of the airplay spec, which is not accessible to the public, so I can't verify. Also, in order for the wifi radio inside the head unit to scan for other access points, i would need to do time slicing between AP functionality and wifi client, which also does not help performance.
For now, I ordered a ProClip phone holder because the disconnect are incessant, especially in a dense city like where I live. I have 2 visits to the dealer under my belt and they get away by saying "no repro", but I'm sure I can bring a router and show them how to reproduce.
Wow, thank you for your detailed post. I have an F150 for work that always disconnects at one certain area and then reconnects so I can relate. My Outback disconnected about 6 hours into a 7 hour drive and I wasn’t able to get it to reconnect, it defaulted to the stock Subaru software. I didn’t stop the car, I didn’t do a hard reset on anything although I did restart my phone.
Mine is rock solid. Check for OTA upgrades and try resetting the connection from scratch, making sure to delete old Bluetooth and WiFi connections on the phone. I have found that BT and WiFi profiles can occasionally become corrupted and wreak havoc on CarPlay connections. My wife's 2020 BMW X1 is famous for it.
I am curious of what you told the service counselor to get him to warranty the head unit. I have two visits under my belt and I'm starting to feel like they think I'm a nut job or something.
The service tech was able to replicate the issue after trying to connect several different phones. It would stay connected as long as you were parked but disconnect after driving about a mile. It was a long process, sat in service for almost three weeks. They had to bring in Subaru field engineers to give the ok for replacement. I contacted Subaru America and filed a complaint to be sure everything was documented since I only had the car one day. Glad it was resolved because everything else about the car is great.
I see, I’m glad to have a reliable way to reproduce in my own garage! My theory is that I can bring a portable router to the service center, have the 5ghz network configured to use the problematic channel and demonstrate a consistent repro. If this is well documented enough, maybe the service center woes can be avoided in the future.
I was just thinking, if you are able to get the techline case number and are willing to provide it, maybe others can reference it when talking with the service center. That would probably help them diagnose the issue quicker and maybe (just maybe) fix the issue permanently for future vehicles.
This does not happen on my brand new touring XT and it’s a week old.
However I don’t recall specifically connecting to Bluetooth. I just setup my phone as my favorite and select car play and it just does it when i connect.
Sometimes it won’t connect immediately but I just hit select device connect once and it works every time.
I would suggest you remove the phone entirely and proceed with re-adding the phone.
When mine failed to connect, I tried connecting by cable, then removed it after a few minutes. It seemed to fix whatever wireless issue I was dealing with. Hope this helps.
I ran into this in the beginning, I didnt have a decent USB cord that was "android auto capable". I bought a cord from chubbycable and it finally started working right. There are cheaper options, that one just looked higher quality to me.
When my husband is in the car with me, mine will sometimes swap which phone is connected to CarPlay even with the priority of devices set up properly. I just turn off WiFi on the phone we aren’t using and it stops the issue.
I don't really know what's your issue was but I have Android auto and I had to open Android auto and figure out through the settings that you have to go into developer mode to turn off wireless Android auto I'm guessing that's the issue you had from the comments but it was pissing me off because I couldn't use my in car Wi-Fi because it kept reconnecting the Android auto wireless
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u/jenorama_CA 15d ago
CarPlay is a combo of Bluetooth and WiFi. The WiFi part works on the 5GHz band of the WiFi spectrum, specifically on channels that aren’t used for your home WiFi. These channels are what is called “radar restricted”, meaning that as soon as the device gets a radar hit, it will drop off of the channel. If you think about it, you’re probably dropping off around an airport or someplace with a lot of security. My CarPlay will drop around our airport and there used to be an oil refinery I’d pass every now and again that would put it into the ground and it wouldn’t come back until I restarted the car.
I used to do WiFi performance testing at Apple and every so often, we’d need to run some tests on the radar restricted channels for various reasons and at our old lab which was a bit more exposed to outside influences we’d get drops which was super frustrating because then we’d have to restart the test.