Photo: Florin Profir/autoevolution
The most recent iOS update that Apple shipped to devices this week silently resolves a glitch that broke down Find My on CarPlay.
If you’ve been part of the iOS ecosystem for more than a few days, you probably know already that Find My is an essential feature for some users, as it helps determine the location of other Apple devices in real time.
It’s not hard to understand why this feature comes in so handy. You can, for instance, see the location of the iPhone used by your kid, but at the same time, Find My also allows users to see where their AirTags are located. The GPS tracker was specifically built with such capabilities in mind, as it can be attached to belongings like wallets and car keys, so finding its location is part of a typical routine.
If you’ve been trying to use Find My in the car, chances are the whole thing failed with a rather vague error message. Obviously, the whole experience is powered by Siri, Apple’s digital assistant that is also integrated into CarPlay, but even so, determining the location of a connected device wasn’t possible while driving.
Every single request failed with a simple message. “I can’t help you with that while driving,” Siri said when sending a command to find the location of a connected device. Many people believed this was the intended behavior, but given the whole thing worked properly before the latest updates, it was clearly just a bug that broke down the Find My functionality on CarPlay.
I’ve been struggling with this problem since September, after upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro (which came with iOS 16 pre-loaded), so there’s a chance that the bug was introduced in this big update that Apple shipped in the fall.
The release of iOS 16.3 earlier this week appears to bring everything back to working. Now when you ask Siri to tell you the location of a connected device, the digital assistant is able to retrieve the information correctly and then speak it via the vehicle’s speaker system. The error seems to be gone for everybody who updated their iPhones to iOS 16.3, but Apple hasn’t released any confirmation on this front.
The new operating system update is already available for download for the iPhone 8 and newer (these are the devices that were supported by iOS 16 as well). On the other hand, while the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s are stuck with iOS 15, Find My appears to be working properly on CarPlay, so even if the patch is missing, the expected behavior is already available on older iPhones as well.
To update the iPhone to the latest version, just head over to Settings > General > Software Update.
It’s not hard to understand why this feature comes in so handy. You can, for instance, see the location of the iPhone used by your kid, but at the same time, Find My also allows users to see where their AirTags are located. The GPS tracker was specifically built with such capabilities in mind, as it can be attached to belongings like wallets and car keys, so finding its location is part of a typical routine.
If you’ve been trying to use Find My in the car, chances are the whole thing failed with a rather vague error message. Obviously, the whole experience is powered by Siri, Apple’s digital assistant that is also integrated into CarPlay, but even so, determining the location of a connected device wasn’t possible while driving.
Every single request failed with a simple message. “I can’t help you with that while driving,” Siri said when sending a command to find the location of a connected device. Many people believed this was the intended behavior, but given the whole thing worked properly before the latest updates, it was clearly just a bug that broke down the Find My functionality on CarPlay.
I’ve been struggling with this problem since September, after upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro (which came with iOS 16 pre-loaded), so there’s a chance that the bug was introduced in this big update that Apple shipped in the fall.
The release of iOS 16.3 earlier this week appears to bring everything back to working. Now when you ask Siri to tell you the location of a connected device, the digital assistant is able to retrieve the information correctly and then speak it via the vehicle’s speaker system. The error seems to be gone for everybody who updated their iPhones to iOS 16.3, but Apple hasn’t released any confirmation on this front.
The new operating system update is already available for download for the iPhone 8 and newer (these are the devices that were supported by iOS 16 as well). On the other hand, while the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s are stuck with iOS 15, Find My appears to be working properly on CarPlay, so even if the patch is missing, the expected behavior is already available on older iPhones as well.
To update the iPhone to the latest version, just head over to Settings > General > Software Update.
Google News