CarPlay not working with iPhone 16 Pro

Update: I just returned my first 16 Pro Max & swapped it for another… IOS 18.1 & running CarPlay, Bluetooth & AirPlay perfectly now! T-Mobile said this is unfortunately becoming a very common issue and they’ve had many returned iPhones lately.

I HAVE A SOLUTION!!!! If your car works with the original iPhone cord, get an adapter that makes it USB-C and that’ll fix it. I tried for over a week to fix my car or phone and I got an adapter for the iPhone cord and CarPlay immediately worked!!!!!

I hade same problem with 16 Pro and Alpine system. Reset everything, wiped carplay settings in phone, erased phone several times from Alpine. Reset Alpine system, none worked. Finally found out that when I add the phone, I have to tell it to do Car play and Hands Free. Clicked on that and it connected right away. Working now.

Hello, I encountered a similar issue trying to connect multiple iphone 16s to a 2020 toyota highlander and wanted to share how I fixed it. Took it to the dealer who had an iphone 13, his paired no problem, but he had no clue otherwise. So I went home and tried a few things.

The fix for me was to first reset the car radio to factory settings, then remove the old 'my cars' connection from the iphone 16, and then disable apple intelligence, and under 'talk to siri' setting, turn on 'press side button for siri' which prompted do i want to enable siri. select yes, and voila, carplay works.

HTH

Had same issue with my brand new iPhone 16 pro in my carplay enabled 2016 Skoda Octavia. Worked perfectly with my iPhone 11. But couldn’t connect with my new phone. Solved it today by buying the Apple USB-C to Lightning adapter (€35). Connected immediately!

In order to get my iPhone 16 pro connected to CarPlay I had to click on "forget phone" for every phone that had ever connected to my CarPlay. Once I did that it connected without issue.

Changed cable on mine to a data and charging cable. Car play now works. Spend 3 hrs on phone to apple support. Then found this suggestion on this group

After spending close to 4 hours over 2 days updating software, resetting networks and alll the other hoops customer care has you do on day 3 I call and the tech asked if I tried a different cable and I replied 3 different cables he then asked were any of the ones I was using an OEM cable I said not. Let’s try a OEM cable so I go grab a OEM cable and Shazam it works. The new question is do I need OEM cables for everything😡

READ THIS IF YOU HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING. I have found only one solution that worked for me and that was buying a wireless carplay device on amazon that connects through USB and allows me to connect wirelessly. I thought it wouldn’t work because my car previously ONLY worked using wired car play but it did. Here are the things that I tried but DID NOT WORK: Turn on content and privacy restrictions, reset network/factory settings, Disconnect car play and all blue tooth devices, delete and reset my car’s connected devices, going to the dealership and “updating software” (mine had no update btw), buying USBA to USBC attachment and cable, buying the belkin boost data transfer cable, buying apple USBC to lighting adapter. None of these worked for my iphone 16 pro max. I spent so many hours talking with apple support and supervisors and looking online… Almost returned my iphone 16 pro max until I tried one last time. I did see on here that that wireless car play adapter did not work for someone so if you tried all of those options then you might be out of luck tbh. I have nissan 2022 kicks, Iphone 16 pro max. Bought my wireless car play adapter on amazon. If you have have any questions just reply to me. It’s very frustrating I get it.

Had the same issue with my new iPhone 16 Pro and my Mazda Mx5 ND

Did latest update today to iOS 18.1 and tried a new cable and it now works, so not sure which of those two solved the problem. I suspect it was the cable as when trying old cable (which previously worked on iPhone 14) then it goes back to the same issue.

My new iPhone 16 worked perfectly on a newer rental car. Will not work on our 2020 Tundra or 2020 Telluride. Would not be recognized by my iMac. Spent hours trying to figure this out. Used cable that came with the new phone. Used multiple different cables. Spent hours on the phone with Apple and actually scheduled an appointment with Toyota. I had a little epiphany(wife suggested), I tried this little adapter and it’s worked perfectly with my computer and on the car.

I used a USB-C to USB-C cable with a small adapter from USB-C to USB. Seemed like a cheap hack.

****click on the photo to see.

[Edited by Moderator]

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but I don't have time to read through 13 pages of comments. I did what ZecaHouston recommended, and then a message came up regarding my Siri not being enabled. Once I set up Siri on my new iPhone 16 Pro, my Carplay suddenly decided to work. This is something to try if you are very frustrated and disappointed with your tech situation.

After researching why my 16 pro max wouldn’t work, I found I had to buy the shortest lightning cable, 6 inches, I could find, which was on Amazon. It finally worked, took 3 tries of trying to connect, but it did. The post I found stated the power required to run CarPlay requires a shorter lightning cable. Hope this helps you

Upgraded to IPhone 16 and it wouldn’t let the messages part of CarPlay show up. If you are running a VPN, turn it off. Once I did this, messages loaded. My VPN was running through a security app (Kinetic Secure).

I think it has to do with ios 18 updates, the introduction of apple intelligence and how that affects default siri configuration. For me resetting everything in the car, removing the car from 'my cars' in carplay, and then turning off apple intelligence and manually enabling siri, solved the issue.