When Carplay Ultra has been announced … check the notes … Three years ago, It was a bold vision of the future of car screens. There was as much drool on the new designs as there were skepticism as to whether a car manufacturer would accept such an extensive display overhaul.
Under all this, there were also concerns about where it regularly left vanilla. The genre that many people had fallen in love, and which was often a prerequisite when buying a new car. Did it disappear, or would it simply be left in the vineyard?
Fortunately, with iOS 26, the answer seems to be a “no” farm because Apple brings much more personalization to our car screens, mainly by leaving the very announced features of Carplay Ultra Trickle to an ordinary carplay. There is more than you think, so take a look.
Design
First, Carplay took the visual qualities of the liquid glass. Since Carplay is essentially a mirror for your iPhone, this is to be expected, but this has been done in a way that has created no readability problem. You will notice the new design in areas like the most rounded corners of application windows, the quay and the switch switches in the settings. It’s good, and it brings a new fresh and soft look to your car.
You can also change the icons on the home screen as you can on your iPhone. So if you want all the clear icons, you can now. Dark icons are also an option, which came for driving (word game) with a new dark mode (which can be automatic based on lighting or forced). I executed the dark carplay mode on my VW ID3 All summer long, and this was an incredible upgrade for readability and ease of use. The darker background combination of net white text makes things easier to look at. Something more and more important because our entertainment systems in the car become richer in functionality and distracting. More about it in a minute.
Readability problems can be further improved with a new wide text option. Quite simply, it makes the text larger on the system scale by increments of 100, 110, 120 and 135%. Although it is good to have, which prevented me from increasing my text size is this very implementation: on a system scale.
In some places, such as the reading screen now, it’s great, which facilitates the glance on the screen and see which piece is at stake. However, in other areas, it makes the content more cramped and more difficult to read. So, even if it is a welcome addition, an option by application would be better.
Finally, Smart Display Zoom aims to resize the elements of the user interface to better adapt to the screen of your car. We do not know how it determines this, and I saw as many people as their user interface reduced, because their user interface increased in size, which happened to me. Unfortunately, this made applications as difficult to use cards, so I died. It is certainly worth checking, but as for mine, you may not get the result you want.
Live activities
IOS 26 provides live activities in Carplay. This means that all live activity showing your iPhone will now appear when you are in multi-visual mode, as well as all the cards and musical reading. This could be useful, for example, to follow the distance through a flight from a family member you take, using Fickle. However, it is the beginning of a disturbing trend through Carplay where there are more detailed distractions on the screen that promise to remove your attention from the road, where it should be.
A flying live activity could be useful, but other live activities could be terrible. Take, for example, Sports alertsExcellent sports sports application. On iOS, they have excellent activities live. However, when transferred to the Carplay interface, details become difficult to read without looking at them carefully. Before you know, you have had the eyes of the road to more than the recommended two seconds maximum.
In addition, live activities seem unreliable in their presence, at least for me. So much so that I have not been able to present itself since the public release of iOS 26. I hope that it is only a minor bug that must be corrected.
Probably Carplay’s feature on iOS 26, widgets are something that has flowed from Carplay Ultra. Carplay has created a new screen to which you can access by sliding directly from the multi-sex layout. On this screen, you can have one or two widgets (depending on the size of your screen).
Fortunately, you organize and add to these batteries> General> Carplay> (your car)> widgets on your iPhone, which offers a much better experience than it would have been on the car screen. (While we are here, can we have this approach to organize rescue widgets, please?)
You can add up to 5 small widgets from any application from your iPhone that offers them. This is both good and bad news. The good news is that you can add a widget for a third -party application and not be linked to the Apple versions of calendar, time and others.
The bad news is that, literally, any widget can be added. This means that interactive widgets that use an area of the widget to jump in a specific place in an application are made unnecessary. I tried to get a Chatppt to enter the vocal mode by pressing the button in the widget, but he did not respond. Instead, it opened the application when I unlocked my iPhone 10 minutes later.
This Slapdash approach to simply add each The widget is both frustrating and perhaps dangerous. An application called Dynamic lyrics Offers a fun widget for your iPhone that displays live lyrics for the song during the game. Unfortunately, this is now available on Carplay, which means that, if you were careless enough, you could have words by scrolling your Carplay screen while you are driving.
I am sure that the beautiful readers of Macstories will not be so reckless to do such a thing, but someone will. And that makes the road less safe for others.
However, there are large uses for widgets in Carplay. Adding a house widget with a large coarse button to close your garage door is an excellent user case. Alternatively, the Apple Music widget allows you to hit the game without navigating to the musical application.
The widget screen can become a much more soothing defect. I do not need to put music or have a visible card every time I drive my car, so having a nice analog clock widget associated with a weather widget is so much more pleasant than my default VW reception screen or my carplay application screen.
Overall, Carplay widgets are a victory if you are selective on how you use them, but Apple really needs to brake free access to everyone that every application of your iPhone A.
Messages
Messages in Carplay now support your pinned conversations, which is ideal for the groups you frequent the most and helps reduce the need for scrolling to access it. This is a step forward in reducing interactions during driving, but what the pinned conversations give, the Tapbacks remove. Yes, Tapbacks are now available on Carplay, and it’s as bad as you can imagine.
When you receive a message in the messages app, after Siri has read it, you will get the option to type next to the usual response and call buttons. The tapping on this subject will surface the usual heart, the thumb up, the thumb down, the haha, the exclamation mark and the question mark, where you can press your choice. They are tiny.
When Apple announcement This, I was honestly shocked. Ask drivers to interact more with their display and distract them more from the road is quite reckless, and I advise you to use it completely.
Additional Trids
Inbound calls now appear to be a contextual notification instead of resuming the whole screen. This is especially welcome when you follow a card route and someone calls.
When your iPhone is associated with your car and you take a screenshot, by default, you will not get a screenshot of your Carplay screen. You can activate this option in the carplay settings of your car.
If you have activated it, sound recognition will now alert you if it detects the sound of a crying baby. An excellent feature that those who have hearing problems will be, I am sure, welcome by driving with an infant.
You can erase all the activities live or the calendar events that appear in the grid view. Useful to free up space, but you can also keep private events on your screen that you may not want passengers to see.
If you have a screen that supports it, the cards now have a multitooch, allowing you to pinch in zooming in the pleasure of your heart.
Carplay on iOS 26 provides new wallpapers, and you can even deactivate them completely.
Although I do not think that many cars support this feature, if you have the required equipment, you can now broadcast video content on the screen of your car. Fortunately, this option is only available when your vehicle is parked.
Conclusion
Carplay on iOS 26 is an important update, with really excellent improvements that facilitate, faster and clearer to use. Unfortunately, these updates are hampered by new additions that encourage more interaction and attention during driving.
When Apple launched Carplay and allowed third -party applications to join us, they have insured – and always do – that inappropriate content as the video applications was not authorized. The recent Apple update to its sports app does not allow its pretty new widget on Carplay, so it seems that Apple always thinks of safety in cars. This makes it all the more confusing and frustrating since any application can add any widget to a Carplay interface.
That, in addition to the frankly dangerous addition of the Tapbacks in the messages, puts Apple’s assertion that Carplay “The smarter and safer way to use the iPhone during driving” On a trembling floor.
There is a real need To make automobile infotainment systems safer to use, and Apple has technology and influence to create a platform that helps achieve this goal, while allowing users to be very connected to their iPhone and their media. However, they seem to grip the game, which is disappointing to say the least.
Nevertheless, if you are aware of these faults by ignoring the Tapbacks and using appropriate widgets, Carplay for iOS 26 is an excellent update which, fortunately, shows that Apple does not make all its goal on Carplay Ultra.
IOS 26 is available as a free update now. Consult Federico’s complete criticism for everything you can expect.
