In the last couple of years, grand CarPlay redesigns and features have been cruelly teased by Apple with nothing to show for it. CarPlay 2.0, wherefore art thou?
That finally changed this year with the announcement of CarPlay Ultra and all the improvements coming to regular CarPlay via iOS 26. Apple’s latest iteration of its operating software arrived this week, and it features some of the biggest updates to CarPlay in years.
Liquid Glass
Apple’s big software strategy was a cross-platform revamp to make all of its operating systems more similar in both aesthetics and performance.
That all starts with the unified Liquad Glass interface that now extends to your vehicle. In practice that means the app icons and some UI elements have the new design, which is customizable with new appearance modes: Default, Dark and Clear. The Clear appearance features several variants as well.
Additionally, there are also new wallpapers that you let customize the backdrop, though you can’t choose your own images as the background.
My colleague John Velasco tested the new interface when it was in beta and found that he prefers the Liquid Glass aesthetic in CarPlay rather than on his iPhone.
After Liquid Glass, Widgets will be the biggest noticeable difference in CarPlay. With iOS 26, you can create widgets for any of your iPhone’s apps, and they don’t even need to have specific CarPlay support.
For example, in beta testing, we were able to make the clock more prominent and select styles that we found more legible. Other options include calendar events, battery status indicators and smart home controls.
App improvements
A number of apps received improvements in iOS 26 but I want to highlight a couple that I believe will be more prevalent to you when you’re on the road.
Maps gets the most with multitouch support for vehicles that feature multitouch displays.
My favorite improvement, and the one that shouldn’t have taken this long to get, is the Phone app will no longer take over the whole display when you take or make calls. Instead, they will now appear in a compact widget so that you don’t miss navigation cues in Maps.
Lastly, Messages has gained the tapback feature, meaning you can quickly select a response rather than speaking aloud to return texts. It should let you focus more on the road rather than stumbling through talking to your car as you formulate a reply.
Speaking of customization, CarPlay now has a new feature called “Smart Display Zoom” that lets you determine what you can see on the display.
That means you can fit more stuff on the screen, though crowding the display can make it hard to quickly tap what you want while driving. But if you don’t like the default you can more easily set it up so that you can operate it more intuitively.
Other customization tools include the ability to resize text and whether or not CarPlay screenshots are enabled.
Live Activities
Live Activities were introduced to the iPhone and Apple Watch with iOS 16, but it’s now coming to CarPlay alongside macOS Tahoe and iPadOS 26.
Basically, if you have a Live Activity (say, sports scores or flight tracking) it will now display on CarPlay.
Video streaming via AirPlay
We’ve all used our car as a cramped waiting room, but iOS 26 finally lets you stream videos when your car is set in park. Now, you can stream a video to the vehicle display using third-party apps like YouTube or AirPlay.
It’s not the most meaningful update on this list, but it should be a boon for all CarPlay-ready parents stuck waiting in the parking lot for their kids this year.
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