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Quick Fixes for the CarPlay Crashes Happening After the Latest iPhone Update

While CarPlay is generally considered a rather stable and reliable application, especially given Apple’s walled garden that doesn’t allow for too many things to go wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean the experience offered to customers is always flawless.
Apple CarPlay home screen 6 photos
Photo: Apple
The CarPlay dashboardWaze on Apple CarPlayHERE WeGo on Apple CarPlayNotification on the CarPlay homescreenThe CarPlay home screen
And those who updated their iPhones to the recently-released iOS 15 certainly know what we mean, as many of them ended up struggling with CarPlay due to occasional crashes and freezes happening after the update.

Unfortunately, nobody knows exactly what’s happening, so users have no other option than to wait for Apple to come up with a fix.

But on the other hand, some of those who ended up encountering CarPlay crashes after the update to iOS 15 came across a series of solutions that sometimes improve the general experience or, if you’re lucky enough, fix the problems temporarily until Apple comes up with a full patch.

Dissecting the problem

Before detailing the possible fixes, it’s very important to understand what exactly happens after installing iOS 15 on an iPhone used for running CarPlay.

First and foremost, it’s a regular crash happening when trying to listen to music. The problem has been reported with both Spotify and Apple Music, and the crash is triggered exactly when the user presses the play button in the music playback interface.

Notification on the CarPlay homescreen
Photo: autoevolution
When this happens, CarPlay turns to a black screen and sometimes restarts, getting the user to the home screen, obviously without any music playing. In other cases, the UI just freezes, requiring an iPhone reconnect to once again reload the home screen.

Others claim that crashes happen when they end calls made on CarPlay. Everything appears to be working just flawlessly until the moment the call comes to an end, and at this point, the application crashes and reloads the home screen.

How to fix CarPlay problems on iOS 15

The first thing you should try is a full reset of your network settings. As weird as it may sound, this seems to resolve the problems for some, though resetting network settings also means you’ll have to manually reconnect to and provide the passwords for your Wi-Fi networks.

To do this on an iPhone, open the Settings screen, go to the General section, tap Transfer or Reset iPhone, and then, under the Reset iPhone menu, click Reset Network Settings.

The CarPlay home screen
Photo: autoevolution
The process doesn’t take more than a few seconds, so you can figure out if this resolved your CarPlay issues quite fast.

Then, those who struggle with the crashes happening when trying to listen to the music should just disable the EQ settings on the iPhone. If this option is already set to off, you should try to enable and then disable it one more time. Make sure the iPhone isn’t connected to the car during this whole time.

Needless to say, those who still can’t figure out a way to restore CarPlay after the update to iOS 15 should just go back to an earlier version of the operating system.

However, if this is the solution that you’re willing to try, you should do the downgrade thing as soon as possible, as Apple is known as a company that typically stops signing older versions of iOS quite fast after the release of every update, so this workaround could soon no longer be available.

The CarPlay dashboard
Photo: autoevolution
It goes without saying a downgrading isn’t necessarily convenient and you’re missing on all the other improvements that come with iOS 15, but if you really want CarPlay in your vehicle, it’s worth a shot.

Apple hasn’t offered any statement on all these problems encountered by users who installed iOS 15 on their iPhones, but there’s a chance the upcoming updates bring things back to normal anyway.
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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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