CarPlay stopped working after iOS 26 update.

I have an iPhone 16 Pro and a third party head unit with CarPlay which has been working flawlessly for over two years with two different iPhones, an SE and my current iPhone 6 Pro. The morning after I updated my iPhone to iOS 26, the Maps screen did not appear on the device as it normally would and instead, a connection error screen appeared. I tried repeatedly to reconnect without success and in the evening, I found various accounts of how this problem had arisen in iOS 26 beta releases and that it might be fixed by resetting everything, forgetting devices etc. well, I sat in my car for an hour doing just that. I managed to connect to the device via Bluetooth and WiFi and when I tried to initiate CarPlay, the device appeared. When I selected it, a CarPlay screen came up which I okayed and then the device disappeared from the CarPlay settings.

I gave my old SE to my girlfriend and there is no problem when I try to connect with that but it doesn't work with my £1000 iPhone 16 Pro literally since I updated to iOS 26.

I think it is fair to say that the iOS 26 update broke and I'm pretty annoyed.

iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 26

Posted on Sep 17, 2025 7:14 AM

Top-ranking reply

Philven

Level 1

16 points

Posted on Oct 8, 2025 9:34 PM

I think I got my car play to work. After I started having problems with the iPhone 17 I installed the 26.0.1 update and the problems got worse. CarPlay would shut off, then come back on, using Siri locked it up completely, and it would shut down during phone calls. I reset the phone, my jeep’s audio system, paired and re-paired the audio system and the iPhone. Nothing worked until I went to the Apple Store and bought a Morphie brand USB A to USB C cable. It solved the problem. I used CarPlay for an hour and a half without a single drop or lock up. Strange but true.

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