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Apple CarPlay 101: Get the ETA for a Destination on Engine Start

While CarPlay itself seems to be a rather limited system, which makes sense given Apple’s obsession for restrictions on its products, there’s so much it can do thanks to the Shortcuts app.
Shortcuts automation for CarPlay 6 photos
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Setting up iPhone automationSetting up iPhone automationSetting up iPhone automationSetting up iPhone automationSetting up iPhone automation
And one of the coolest things is automatically providing you with the driving time to a specific destination when starting the engine. In other words, you can configure CarPlay to speak how long it takes to reach an address, like your home for instance, without doing anything else than simply starting the engine.

In case you’re wondering why this is useful, just imagine you are typically driving from home to the office and from the office back home. Since we all live in crowded cities, traffic jams are quite a headache, so getting an ETA without raising a single finger obviously comes in handy.

As a side note, if you’re using Waze on your iPhone, you can simply configure the Waze widget on the smartphone to provide the ETA for two different addresses (work and home) just by tapping them at any given moment.

But what the shortcut here does is instruct CarPlay to get your current location, then look for the pre-defined one (like your home address), check out the traffic conditions, determine the ETA, and then speak it through the car’s speakers so you’ll always know how long it takes to reach the said address.

Doing this really isn’t difficult and only takes a few minutes until you figure out the whole thing. And the best of all is that you can further customize the shortcut with your own options to add new capabilities, such as automatically sending a message with the ETA to someone in your contact list.

Shortcuts is an app that’s available on all iPhones running at least iOS 12, but your device should be on iOS 13 for a much more refined experience.

Setting up the automation

The first step to create an automation that speaks the driving time to a specific destination is to launch the Shortcuts app and then go the Automation section by tapping the icon at the bottom.

Next, click the option that reads Creation Personal Automation and in the Travel section, select CarPlay. Tap the Next button and then select the Connects option because you want the automation to run when CarPlay launches – this is actually an essential part of the whole thing because most people connect their iPhones from the car before turning on the engine. And when turning on the engine, CarPlay launches too, which is the moment when the automation runs and you are thus provided with the ETA to your destination.

Next, you need to define two different actions.

At least two actions needed

The first of them is for the Maps app, and you need to configure it to Get driving time from Current location to a user-defined address. All variables are available after setting up the action, and make sure you choose this exact configuration.

The second action is to speak text (you can find the option under the Documents section). What you need to do is configure this action to Speak Travel Time (again, the variable becomes available after setting up the action).

At this point, your basic automation is ready to go, so tap next and then uncheck the option that reads Ask Before Running because it needs to run every time CarPlay launches without any user input.

Further enhance the automation

And that’s pretty much it. As said earlier, you can further enhance the automation with more options, including sending the ETA to a specific contact, but again, the actions defined above are the core of all more complex setups. How you improve this automation is only up to you and your needs.

If you want to configure the automation to send a message with the travel time to some in your contact list, all you need to do is to define a third action using the Messages app. This time, you need to Send Travel Time to Contact – you need to tap the Contact variable and define the person in your list to send the ETA to. If you want to use a third-party messaging app, such as WhatsApp, there’s support for this one too, only that instead of Messages, you need to select the app that you want to use.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
Bogdan Popa profile photo

Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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