For most people, CarPlay is an essential feature. Apple’s in-car experience provides a far superior entertainment experience compared to the options offered by car manufacturers. Quick access to your favorite apps, integration with Siri, seamless connectivity, and much more are available.

Here are my favorite tips and tricks to make the most of your CarPlay experience...

Updated with new iOS 26 features on April 7, 2026

Customize Your CarPlay Apps and Home Screen

While most of your favorite apps may be available on CarPlay, that doesn’t mean you want all of them on your CarPlay Home Screen. Fortunately, adjusting these options is quite easy.

  1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone
  2. Tap on “General”
  3. Tap on “CarPlay”
  4. Select your car’s name and tap on “Customize”

Here, you will see a complete list of all the CarPlay apps on your phone. You can hide apps from appearing on CarPlay by tapping the red minus sign.

You can also rearrange your CarPlay Home Screen on this page of the Settings app. Drag the app icons into the order you want using the three lines on the right side of the app.

  • These are the best CarPlay apps for iPhone
  • These are the best CarPlay apps for electric vehicle owners

CarPlay Wallpapers

While you can’t use just any photo as a CarPlay wallpaper, Apple offers preloaded options.

  1. Open the Settings app on CarPlay
  2. Select “Wallpaper”
  3. Select the wallpaper you want and tap on “Set”

Apple occasionally adds new wallpaper options to CarPlay, but there are still a limited number of choices available.

Wireless or Wired?

CarPlay works both wired and wirelessly, depending on your vehicle’s make and model. Wired CarPlay typically offers a faster and more reliable experience. When using wireless CarPlay, you may experience some lag when changing songs or accessing Siri.

Here’s my strategy:

  • For quick trips around town, I use wireless CarPlay when getting in and out of the car while shopping.
  • For longer journeys, I use wired CarPlay when I’m in the car for an extended period.

Still, your experience may vary depending on your vehicle. However, there are ways to bring wireless CarPlay to any car. My personal recommendation is the CarlinKit 5.0 adapter, which transforms your car’s wired CarPlay into a wireless experience. You can find this adapter for under $60.

Dark Mode

CarPlay is available with both light and dark mode interfaces. You can choose between three options in the Settings app via CarPlay:

  1. Light
  2. Dark
  3. Automatic

I use the automatic setting; this setting switches between light and dark modes based on the time of day and other external lighting factors.

Driving Focus Mode

One of the key advantages of CarPlay is that it enhances in-car safety by preventing you from picking up your phone. First, there’s Driving Focus Mode. This mode keeps your attention on the road by blocking incoming notifications, messages, and calls.

You can customize Driving Focus Mode through the Settings app on your iPhone. You have options to allow notifications from specific people and enable an automatic reply feature that lets those texting you know that you are driving. Additionally, you can choose to automatically enable Driving Focus Mode when you connect to CarPlay.

Announce Messages

Announce Messages is a popular iPhone feature that works with Siri and reads your messages aloud. You then have the option to respond to that message vocally. This feature works with Apple’s Messages app as well as third-party apps like WhatsApp.

  1. Go to Settings > Siri & Search > Announce Notifications
  2. Turn on the Announce Notifications option and select supported apps
  3. In CarPlay, ensure that Announce Messages with Siri is enabled in the CarPlay Settings app

SharePlay

If you’re like me, you prefer to have control over the music while driving. However, if you want others in your vehicle to be able to add songs as well, CarPlay provides that for you.

In the Apple Music Now Playing screen, you’ll see a SharePlay icon in the upper right corner. Tapping this icon will prompt you to create a QR code that others can scan. When they scan this QR code, a pop-up will appear indicating that someone wants to join your SharePlay session.

Once that person joins, others can add songs to the queue, see what’s currently playing, and rearrange the queue – even if they don’t have Apple Music.

Widgets

With iOS 26, Apple has added widget support for the first time. You can now access most of your favorite iPhone widgets from your car’s screen.

The app here will vary depending on your car’s screen size. In some cars, you can create two “stacks” of widgets, while others limit you to a single stack.

To manage widgets in CarPlay, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Select General.
  3. Select CarPlay.
  4. Tap on “Widgets”

Here you can add multiple widgets to your stack and rearrange their order. There’s also a “Smart Rotate” option that will intelligently switch between widgets in each stack, as well as a “Widget Suggestions” option.

Live Activities

iOS 26 also adds support for Live Activities in CarPlay. This mirrors the Live Activities visible on your iPhone to your CarPlay screen. Live Activities are one of my favorite iPhone features, so I’m glad they made their way to CarPlay with iOS 26.

Live Activities are enabled by default in CarPlay, but you can disable them by going to the Settings app on your CarPlay screen.

Pinned Messages

iOS 26 refreshes the Messages app in CarPlay by supporting pinned messages at the top. However, this change has been controversial. With iOS 26.2, Apple added the option to disable pinned conversations in Messages on CarPlay.

Open the Settings app on your CarPlay screen and turn off the “Pinned Messages” option.

Icon Color Adjustment

If you want to refresh your CarPlay interface, there are different appearance modes available: Default, Dark, and Transparent. You can find these options in the Settings app on CarPlay.

Tips and Tricks

Are you a CarPlay user? If so, what are your favorite tips and tricks? Share with us in the comments.

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