CarPlay not working with iPhone 16 Pro

The Bluetooth in the car may not be multi-link meaning that you cannot have controls designed for dialing and accessing contacts connected to your phone and concurrently allowing a Bluetooth Car Play connection. Review the CX-5 owners manual and check with the Mazda Service department to determine if Mazda has released a CarPlay firmware update for your vehicle, or if the Mazda CarPlay implementation in 2018 is not compatible with CarPlay in iOS 18.

I have had same problem and someone suggested to uninstall iPhone from CarPlay and reinstall and pair it with car again and happy to say that for now couple of days things works just fine.

you may want to try that.

Hi All. I upgraded from iPhone 13 Pro Max to 16 Pro Max and had same issues with Apple CarPlay. I had bought USB-A to USB-C adapters and kept getting ‘Overcurrent Detected’ message in my vehicle. After reading article in 9 to 5 found out the cable we use must be able to transfer data, not just charge the phone. I bought the Belkin charger from this list and CarPlay works perfectly now!

[Edited by Moderator]

I finally fixed it by actually turning on Content and Privacy Restrictions and then Allow for CarPlay

I don’t know why it was turned off after installation of my old phone’s backup. When I turned it on all of my old settings were there. My car is a 2022 Avalon Hybrid

Try this:

1. Go into your iPhones settings and turn off everything related to CarPlay and restart the iPhone.
2. Do a factory reset on your car's screen.
3. Go back to the iPhone and reactivate CarPlay.
4. Back to the car's CarPlay set-up menu: When prompted, select Forget This Device.
5. Then, re-sync your iPhone to CarPlay.

I had the same issue with my 2019 Toyota Avalon. I tried some cable adapters (both lighting and USB A) to convert one of the ends of the old cables I had. That failed miserably and didn’t work.

I bought an Anker USB-A A to USB-C cable for about $10 from Walmart. It comes with a cable wrap which is nice in the center console to keep things organized.

The new cable worked right away. CarPlay booted faster than ever before. No issues at all.

I have a Volkswagen Tiguan (2019) and Jetta (2018) and could not get my iPhone 16 Max Pro to connect. Based on all the suggestions I found online this is what I did to fix it:

I ordered a usb-a to usb-c data transfer cord. Apparently some charging cords only charge and do not transfer data. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I went into settings on my iPhone and then Content & Privacy restrictions and turned off CarPlay and turned off my iPhone and switched it back on.

I went into my car and deleted all existing phone connection. Then on my iPhone went into my bluetooth settings, located my car connection and hit “forgot this device”.

I then went into settings on my iPhone and then Content & Privacy restrictions and turned on CarPlay and turned off my iPhone and switched it back on.

I then added my iPhone to my car via Bluetooth first and then plugged my phone in with the cord I purchased and it worked.

I have the same issue with my iPhone 16 Pro. My 15 pro worked fine.

I solved the issue!

screen time>content & privacy information >car play (was disabled)

as soon as I enabled it my car prompted to finish setting up car play and everything showed up again.

Mine the same. But I found this and tried, worked!

‘Try settings, general, CarPlay, and delete all vehicles. You may also need to go settings, general, scroll down to reset phone, and click on reset network settings.’

Worth to have a go.

Dear Colleagues,

i’ve been experience the same problem to connect my Iphone 16 Pro with my car and have the car play working properly. As a result a called Apple Support. Here is the troubleshooting conducted in order to make it work:

1. Go to Settings >> Focus >> turn off all (i.e sleep)
2. go to settings >> car play >> forget this device
3. go to “reset all networking settings”. Your iphone will restart after typing the password.
4. go to your car settings and delete your device
5. set up the car play again with your car.

This should work with bluetooth. Good luck.

Someone share on another thread Apple CarPlay Not Working in iOS 18.0 - Apple Community that privacy restrictions need to be enabled for the CarPlay to work and that resolve the issue for me so do check it initially I thought it might be some major issue with my car infotainment but thanks gods it just a setting that was turned off for the reference my car is Toyota Camry and my iPhone is 16 pro.

After more than two hours online with Apple Support and a senior manager of their tech support, we were unable to get my 2019 Mercedes to get CarPlay to start up with my new iPhone 16 Pro. Today I finally solved the issue by purchasing a USB-C to Lightening adapter as many here have done, as well as completely rebooting the Mercedes Benz infotainmant system inside the vehicle by going to "System", then going to "Reset". I hope this is helpful to other Apple users. For many vehicles your Apple CarPlay may not work properly unless you reboot your internal car entertainment system software. Unfortunately this also means having to re-setup all the internal settings of the car to your liking.

Yes my Mercedes too only has USB-A inputs thus I had to buy the USB-A to USB-C Adapter from the Apple Store.

USB-C to USB Adapter - Apple. Separately -- I went to my internal Mercedes Infotainment center, and to "Systems" and completely reset the infotainment center to its default settings. Using the same cable (data plus charging) that I knew worked earlier for Apple CarPlay, but now with the new USB-A to USB-C adapter attached, and after having rebooted the infotainment system to default setting then attached my new iPhone 16 Pro to the system and it then did recognize the new phone and I was able to proceed to set up the new phone. The only real downside is that one will need to completely set up all the other in-vehicle settings that one wants inside the vehicle but that only took me just a few minutes to re-establish. I hope this works for you.

I just had the same issue. One thing to check is your usb to usbc cable. I grabbed a few and turns out they weren’t rated for CarPlay. I dug through my cable box, found the Anker set rated for CarPlay and it worked fine.