CarPlay does not dial contacts

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Level 1

18 points

CarPlay does not dial contacts

I have noticed a problem through different versions of iOS 13 where CarPlay will not dial a contact. While the phone is connected, I will say “Siri, Call John Scott” and CarPlay Siri will respond with “I did not find a John Scott in your contacts. Who would you like to call?” John Scott is definitely there in the contacts list. If I were to use my Apple Watch and ask Siri to call him, the phone would find his contact and do it. If were to disconnect the phone from CarPlay and ask Siri, she would find the contact and call him.

i have attempted the cycle of erasing my phone and restoring its backup and I have observed that this problem does seem to go away — for a few days — and then resurface. So a full backup and restore does not seem to resolve my problem.

i synchronize my contacts using the Contacts app which I connect to an Office 365 subscription. I do not have the Outlool 365 iOS app on my phone, so I do not expect this to be contributing to the problem. I do not sync my contacts to iCloud and have this toggle switched to “off.”

What might be causing this bug and how can I fix it?

Posted on Jul 19, 2020 1:56 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

joetermine Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 15, 2020 5:56 PM in response to Fred Erickson

A few steps:

1 - Turn off the WiFi on the phone before getting into the car.

2 - Power on the car.

3 - Connect the phone to CarPlay.

4 - Hard reboot your car’s audio system with the phone connected to it. In my Ford Fusion, I hold down the power button and the fast-forward button simultaneously. I’m sure the Lexus has some function to do this. I suspect the hard reboot purges some cache in the car’s audio system CarPlay executable.

5- Let the phone reconnect to CarPlay when the audio panel reboots. Be sure you are on the cellular network and try dialing a contact. In my case, it worked when I did this.

I’m not sure if this “reset” will persist, but it has been working for a few days. The relief to me is that i didn’t have to erase the phone. I had tried erasing the phone before and restoring it which helped for a time, but the problem returned. This “reset” strategy is a better one I think.

Would be interested to know if it works for you.

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Answer 2

joetermine Author

Level 1

18 points

Jul 19, 2020 8:17 PM in response to Axel Foley

No because I sync contacts with Office 365 using the standard iOS contacts app, similar to how a Gmail user syncs with their Google contacts. If I turn the sync on with iCloud, I wind up with duplicate contacts across two services.

I would add that this is just “CarPlay Siri” that has the problem dialing contacts. If I disconnect from CarPlay, “Phone Siri” and “Watch Siri” have no problem dialing them, leading me to suspect this is a CarPlay problem and not a Contacts Sync problem with Office 365.

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Answer 3

Aug 15, 2020 3:21 PM in response to joetermine

I have exactly the same issue. I found one interesting point today. In my garage where my iPhone connects to WiFi, it finds my contacts just fine. If I turn off WiFi on the phone, Siri can't find the contacts. This function worked great for about 2-3 months on my new (Feb, 20) Lexus, then quit working. I'm assuming it was an iOS update that killed it, but I don't remember which one.

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Answer 4

joetermine Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 15, 2020 3:26 PM in response to Fred Erickson

It was iOS 13.1 where the trouble started. And I agree — it has something to do with the network CarPlay is using to connect to Siri’s “brain” in the Apple Cloud.

If the car is connected to WiFi in the garage and i pull out of the garage, my phone will eventually hit the cellular tower but my car will never find the contacts. If I shut off the WiFi before getting into the car and connecting CarPlay, Siri will find the contacts while I’m driving.

I am suspicious that my having a VPN client on my phone may be interfering with Siri too. Although I don’t connect the VPN client while I’m driving, I wonder if this network interface is being chosen by Siri incorrectly.

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