iOS 15.1 broke connectivity to my car stereo

I, unfortunately, do not think that this issue is going to be fixed. I am having the same problem. I am very upset because I used this feature every time I drove. I contacted apple support and they basically said "well your car is too old. Sorry."

Agentzero21 wrote:

Like I said FIX IT APPLE

Again, Apple isn't here, we're all just fellow users.

Contact Apple Support, and leave feedback as well:

• Contact - Official Apple Support
• Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Car production designs may be old but iOS 15.1 is a <0.1 update only.

Monterey has a Rosetta Emulator for backward compatibility for software over a decade old? I’m sure a USB 1 or 2 emulator is very light (existing) coding here.

But I expect this issue is just a very embarrassing human error to the millions of Apple Users who must be affected.

I have an iPhone 13 and a 2017 Chevy. I’ve never been able to play through usb. So frustrating. Went to the Apple store and they were absolutely no help. They told me to go to the dealership, which will just charge me a lot of money to look at this issue which seems to be an Apple issue if the older phones work. Older phones can play through my car. I’ve been using a lightning adapter and an aux cord, but the phone can’t charge like that and I can’t use my wheel controls to change the music (has to be done on the phone). I did update my iOS, but it hasn’t worked since day 1.

As mentioned before, I suspect that there is some logic in the head end that assumes that if it can connect to a device via Bluetooth, it will allow you to connect to the radio via USB to charge the device but will not then use USB for the audio connection.

A great analog is the Apple Magic Trackpad. If you connect the charging cord to a USB port, the computer can talk to the trackpad via USB as a USB device, but most of the time it will only use USB to charge the trackpad and will instead talk to it using Bluetooth.

Hi. I have a 2016 Chevy Cruze, and it looks like the exact same radio as yours, and I am having the same issue too. I got the new iPhone 13 pro max and at first it was working fine with my usb cable, but then I updated my phone to the new 15.1 and it’s the same issue as yours. It charges my phone but it won’t pick up to play music or anything. But it picks up, and plays music, from my partners iPhone 12 Pro Max that is at 14.4.2 software. I have been trying to see what is wrong I’m glad I’m not the only one with this issue. I really hope they send a new update to get this fixed.

Same issue with a 2010 Chevy Equinox. Worked fine until iOS 15. First build of iOS 15 forced me to manually start music and manually switch my stereo to the AUX mode to hear the device, but since 15.1 I can only charge the phone now.

I guess I'm glad my iPod Nano from 10+ years ago still works with this functionality...

That’s the first thing I did, I thought maybe I blew a fuse for the usb and that’s why it’s not picking up. Buts it’s the software my friend has the older version and switches right over to his iPod function and also tried it on my friends 2021 car and my phone wouldn’t connect his iPhone with the older Version of iOS did

It is a human error, what we're trying to nail down is whether it's an error at Apple or an error at Panasonic, who, as best as I have been able to determine, was the contracted manufacturer of all of the head end units that seem to be having issues with this.

Again, this issue is far from universal, which makes it harder to diagnose.

If I plug my iPhone 13 Pro Max into my 2011 Toyota (no CarPlay, just BT and USB) or my Denon home stereo (USB), it just works as normal.

The update on my phone for some reason didn’t install overnight on this occasion. It had downloaded and ‘prepared’ before I set off for work. On my car journey into work everything worked fine. When I got to work my phone joined the work Wi-Fi as normal and then installed the update. On my journey home the phone wasn’t connecting to my car. Apple have said it could be because there was a break between download/preparation and installation but I don’t understand why, considering it was installed automatically nothing I could do to delay this.

My radio is the same as the original poster I have a 2012 Cruze. Looks like it’s effected more than just GM radios. I saw one for a Honda and a Mercedes. It has also effected some home audio components

Strangely enough, reading your thread my phone/car would ‘lose’ Bluetooth mid-call and would have to wait until I was home and parked to ‘delete’ the phone and go right back to re-install when I first installed iOS 15.0, then when the 15.1 update went on the only thing the USB will do is charge the phone. I can make tel calls and, strangely enough, I don’t lose Bluetooth connectivity. I did buy an aux cable to use the aux port but it still doesn’t pick up the iPhone.

I am having the SAME exact issue with my 2014 Cruze. I thought it was the cord, so I bought a new cord. Obviously that did nothing. So I thought “maybe it’s the hdmi port in the car” so I bought an aux cord and the adapter for the iPhone. DIDN’T WORK EITHER. This is really frustrating and I hope Apple fixes this ASAP.

That’s horrible that several people had an issue where Apple reps told them to “get a new car”. I chatted with someone first who essentially told me it’s an issue with my car and not with them, and I said back “then why does the other device I tried using (running a different version of iOS) work and mine doesn’t?” And they immediately said “let me escalate this to a senior rep” or something, and that guy was super helpful and tried to help me fix it for an hour with no luck. This is when I tried a different vehicle too and he took down information about both devices I tried and both vehicles and escalated it to developers. They’re supposed to reach back out on Thursday and I will update when they do.

I had 2 separate calls from various apple support techs over 2 days when it first happened, on both calls they were going backwards and forwards to find the ‘fix’ but when all failed even recovering several occasions didn’t work there was nothing they could do as they’d exhausted all ideas. Apple need to get this sorted but in a way I’m glad that it’s not just me or a fault on the car!