Play CarPlay Dolby Atmos

Apple disabled it in update 15.4 and have not supported Atmos w/Carplay since. I dont know why. I think it was super silly on their part to take this option away from users who could possibly have a high end sound system in their car with a carplay supported headunit. I still have a iPhone 12 Pro with 15.3.1 and Atmos w/Carplay does in fact work. So once upon a time, this was a feature.

Can confirm that through CarPlay Atmos does not play. I have checked this with a song where I know of a specific difference between the Atmos and the stereo mix. When connected over Bluetooth only (not car play) the Atmos version plays- but when connected on CarPlay it reverts back to stereo.

Edit: so yeah… read this Announcement from Dolby, apparently they wanted the car manufacturers to pay for Atmos first to enable Dolby Atmos through CarPlay.

Maybe it is a patent thing? Dolby Atmos is not a open source format, and based on my previous experience using Apple Music on Android phones, if the phone does not support Atmos (aka didn’t pay Dolby money), the option would not show up in the app at all. As platterfoot has said, it used to be a feature until Apple deleted it, so I’m thinking maybe they just realized that some cars don’t support that… so decided to cut it from CarPlay entirely?

Hi there!

If you are having issues with using Dolby Atmos with your iPhone, first ensure you are following the steps outlined here to use this feature and check compatibility: About Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos in Apple Music

If this continues after looking over that, does the device you are connecting to CarPlay show that it is playing music with Dolby Atmos? We'll use that information to narrow this down further.

Take care!

So yeah… read this Announcement from Dolby, apparently they wanted the car manufacturers to pay for Atmos first to enable Dolby Atmos through CarPlay.

No it is a problem that is happening to all users, before plugging the phone to the car it shows to dolby atmos icon (while using the phone speakers), but the second i connect it to carplay, the icon disappears and it continues playing in the normal format not in dolby’s!

I think it won’t come back until/unless USB-C becomes standard in cars. Just a hunch that Dolby Atmos is too much data for lightning to USB-A and it breaks CarPlay.