Pixelated screen using Apple CarPlay

Apple Carplay is a product offered by Apple. They offer minimum requirements for car manufacturers to adhere too so it would work. If it suddenly doesn't work anymore for various brands, they at minimum have a responsibility to investigate and make sure their min reqs for using apple carplay are up to date. You trying to make it seem like they are not responsible or at minimum responsible to help finding a fix, does not help anybody. I think several people (including me) have also contacted the car manufacturer, but that doesn't mean Apple should not (help) investigate this.

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I have another product that works with my apple devise - a Dexcom G7 for glucose monitoring. Dexcom have said fair and square that their product does not work with IOS 16 and advise users (because it’s a medical advise) not to update to IOS 16 until they find a work around / solution. There is no responsibility on apple’s behalf 🤷🏻‍♂️… it’s upto Dexcom to find the solution.

As a result, my phone is still on IOS 15 and I do have the CarPlay issue in my VW… and that only arose after it updated It’s software via the pre installed SIM card by itself. So who’s responsible there?

Also, the people (including myself) that have 2nd cars or other brands like BMW that car play continues to works 100% with???

Why?

Possibly because their hardware is made by a different 3rd party tech company to that found in VW etc.

I’m guessing google maps still works on your iPhone… right?

@Desmoden1 You're confusing two things, an app an Carplay are completely different beasts. One is an app on top of an OS, the other is a complete product with severe limitations. Apps within carplay have to adhere to apple's restrictions, which are severe, with good reason.

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This conversation is becoming a little bit "hot". I know this issue is annoying.

I will add my bit of information to the thread.

I'm a owner of a Seat Leon, 2020. MIB3 installed on Head Unit.

I started getting the "pixelation" only using Waze.

But not immediately, at the end of 2012, after a Waze update, while I was on iOS 15.

After 6 months, it started to pixelate even Google Maps, after an update (still iOS 15).

You can find other users in the same situation, here

I disabled the carplay intergration of both Apps, so at least I can use them on the phone, with driving directions on the speakers and having other (working) apps on Carplay Display.

Never experienced any issue with Apple Maps.

I upgraded to iOS 16, with no change.

But it seems that iOS 16 exacerbated the issues to a wider "audience".

Cabled or wireless, doesn't change the problem.

I'm a software engineer, with more than 20 years of experience on my shoulder. I think that @Desmoben1

partially got the point.

The problem is a combination of unlucky occurences.

Navigation Apps stream video from the phone to the carplay device.

On the Car Head Unit, there is probably a system-on-chip hardware, decoding video, that is not working very well with the new library introduced by Google in their Navigation Apps.

Do you noticed any other app having similar issues ? nope. Only Google Apps.

So, the point is that Google is probably not going to "rollback" the library, the user affected are less than users without issues (probably). It will be a risk to change the streaming library, for other car-makers.

Is Google interested solving an issue with an Apple Device ? So and so, probably they will tell you that Google Maps works best on Android.

Is Apple interested in solving the issue ? Yes, probably they can mitigate, but the issue begin with the Apps and end on the hardware video codec mounted on cars.

Is VW( or other car makers impacted units) interested solving the issue ?

Yes, but probably, they depends on the 3rd party system-on-chip maker and firmware of each MIB3 unit. Probably firmwares are differents from car to car.

This problem is quite hard to fix, probably only putting on the same table Google,Apple and Volkswagen could lead to a solution.

Meanwhile I almost stopped using Waze from Jan 2022.

I prefer to swap car brand, rather than switch to an Android Device, sorry Google.

@frontegi I think you're right in that it's a video codec issue (master of science/software engineer with about 15 years experience here ). However, if you'll look at the screenshots, it's the full interface that gets pixelated / discoloured, not just the maps part. So that makes me think Apple Carplay supports the used codec, or the app wouldn't be allowed to load in Carplay. Hence my argument: you can't say Apple is not partially responsible or should help investigate this issue (or even taking the lead).

Even disabling Carplay for those Google apps, forcing them to fix the issue, would be helpful IMO.

Did anybody from here actually contact Apple support about this issue though? I'm currently in contact for a ScreenTime issue, and they're being very helpful with that tbh.

@Daften, totally agree with you, the ecosystem is created and maintained by Apple, so they should take the lead in the investigation. And probably I've been lucky @CharlesEA, having at least Apple Maps working. Probably it depends on phone and head-unit combination. I'm suffering the problem before it widespreaded, and it is almost passed a year. The reality is that the end-user experience (me) has been terrible, and I'm disappointed to have been abandoned.

I opened a thread 6 months ago, on Waze Forums, asking a Product Manager to investigate the issue. I'm still here...

However guys, we can still all get back to Nokia 3310. Indestructible, no car integration, no apps, no issues. Nice games.

This is NOT an apple issue. It’s the cara media players issue.

I use the same phone in two different cars.

On my VW Caddy 2021 it starts 5 minutes into driving on Google and Apple Maps.

In my Honda it is absolutely fine and stable for hours . Same phone , same IOS etc.

so it has to be a car issue as opposed to an apple issue.

I have a Honda Jazz , but not an inbuilt media system. It’s a Pioneer after market, so maybe that’s the answer.

My VW Caddy has been back into the service centre and they couldn’t fault find it and were going to contact VW main office to find out more about the problem . But maybe if this is definitely an Apple issue there is little point them having it back in again ???

Experiencing all the same issues in VW Golf Mk8 when using wireless Apple CarPlay. Fingers crossed a solution is in the works from the sounds of people’s experiences with Apple devs. Super useful forum thanks everyone, saved me a wasted trip to the dealer I just purchased the car from.

Experience this too on my VW Passat Discover Pro screen with software version 0809. I have tried connecting via cable (non-wireless Carplay) and this problem does not occur. I think it is related to how wireless transmission project the screen without some error correction or key frame to rectify corrupted screen.

What a faff for something that shouldn’t even be happening in the first place. I have tried your workaround and it fixes it for about 5 minutes and then it starts all over again and again and again . If I’m in Central London concentrating on traffic and trying to navigate , everything suggested is a compete NO No.

So either Apple have to fix it or VW. I’ve had my car for 18 months and the same IPhone 11 for longer, and up till 2 months ago it was perfect. So why has it all changed ??

My vehicle is a Passat 2021 B8.5, I had the same issue when my software was 078. Waze and google gets laggy and soon pixelated after like 5 mins.

The issue seemed to be fixed after I brought the car back to the dealership to update the infotainment software. I’ve been driving using Waze on Apple CarPlay for like an hour drive. So far so good.

I officially reported the bug to Apple today, hope they will help to sort that out between VW and Google. This is not only a software issue, but a general car safety issue as we are a lot distracted while driving!

Hi,

I was struggling with the same issue in Octavia MK4 2.0 TSI (2021) since I upgraded to iOS 16.

Today my dealership upgraded software version from 1803 to 1896 and it seems like issue is resolved. I've been driving for over 1 hour without any problems - iOS 16.2.

After answering all the questions that were posed to me by vw connect - I received another email from them only yesterday asking me to confirm if the issue was now resolved? … and on yesterdays and then todays 2 hour long journeys- it was and is.

In fact, the imagery on google maps looks even sharper than it did before the pixelation issue ever began. Hopefully, it will now continue to work perfectly.

I believe I said from the get-go that I believed that this was a VW issue .. (or at least an issue from the people that write VW’s software/firmware which likely means they write it for other car manufacturers also) and not an apple one ….some others in this group told us that they knew better. Hymph! 🤷🏻‍♂️