How to disable car autoplay on iPhone

As product lead for a line of enterprise software apps with complimentary mobile apps, I well understand that some issues are lower priority than others - the unfortunate reality of limited development velocity. I too have been looking for a solution to this for some time now - it's obviously been around for at least 3 years. In general, I love my iPhone, but this one problem must be very prevalent at this point with technology in cars being what it has become. I still find it disappointing this has not been addressed by Apple thus far. In hopes for a resolution, here is what happens in my case.

I drive a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee with the uConnect system. (before this I drove an Acura, same issue)

I love that I can play music native that is on my phone5 (latest iOS at time of writing)

I'm utterly frustrated that I plug the phone in to USB to charge, and it (the phone, not the car) automatically plays itunes

- even when I am talking on the phone! the music plays right over the conversation.

What's worse, is that you cannot simply hit pause or stop - in fact it doesn't respond at all. I have to close the open app, and slide up from the bottom to see the option for the iTunes auto-play. But I cannot stop it from here either! I have to tap the song from this screen and open the actual itunes app. From there, I can pause the music and close the app. ...all this while driving down the road and make a hands-free telephone call.

Options I've found:

1. Take all music off your phone.

2. Plug phone into a cigarette charger that is not USB connected.

3. Don't plug in phone.

I am in and out of my car while on the phone on a daily basis. When I can, I simply don't make the call or pull away from a park before connecting the phone and manually turning off iTunes (yes, every time) but this is not always possible and I often will already be on the call when I get into the car. This is annoying enough that I am considering taking all my music off my iphone and only use the SD-card to play music in the Jeep (really great feature). Of course this means buying music through itunes just got a lot less valuable as this prohibits easy write of song to an SD card, and I very often listen in the car.

Simple option to stop autoplay with itunes would address this and keep me (and likely others) as an itunes customer.

Other than this, I've been very happy with my iphone and itunes service.

Todd

I'm having the same issue too. When I'm playing a radio app (RECIVA) on my iPhone 6, which is connected via bluetooth to my Lexus radio system, it is continuously interrupted by iTunes. This is VERY ANNOYING!

It's worse than what you are all saying. You see, even after you have stopped the music, if you initiate any app which uses audio, that restarts the music. I have found that if you are using Maps or something it stays quiet, but if you were to start to talk to Siri it will then start the Music app once it finished with Siri.

This is with an iPhone 6+ on iOS 8 running 8.2

My theory is that Apple doesn't care. It knows that the manufacturers of bluetooth devices could fix it with a firmware upgrade but it would rather they adopted Car Play. This doesn't help a legacy car that is 6 months old and worked perfectly under iOS 7 with an iPhone 5S

Shame on you Apple. It's not testing. Your employees would have told you about the bug with simple ad hoc experience.

I guess I can stop my search for an answer now since this appears to have been an issue for years. My particular flavour of this same issue is that I listen to Audible Books. When I plug my phone in I get Vampire Weekend playing. I have to stop that and then open the Audible application to start listening. Once I get into the book I'm all set but it would make more sense, for me, for this to be configurable so that, for example, my book starts playing automatically from where I left off. This would be configurable so that I can switch that off so that I can plug in my phone to charge and do nothing else. Seems like a really simple fix that Apple doesn't want to make for some reason.

EDIT: I am connecting via a wire, not Bluetooth.

This happens to my blue tooth headset, I use my phone to make and receive calls, in-between calls iTunes pops up and randomly picks a song or a track from an audio book. I double click to stop it and it doesn't even show up as a running app.

My solution was to delete all music and audio books from my new iPhone 6, and use my iPhone 4 as a music player, thus my 64g iPhone 6 now has plenty of room for ...

I can't be distracted while driving and making phone calls on my headset with random audio.

I too have this issue and it's wildly annoying. But while many respondents to this post have identified their cars' makes and models, my experience is with an aftermarket (Pioneer) head unit. So I am fairly certain that this is an iOS issue.

Yes, everything has an off switch but I am frustrated that we are forced to make the choice to turn it OFF; who asked for this? Why not disable the auto-play function and allow the consumer to choose whether to turn it ON or not; seems like a novel idea, I know?

This is similar to the the U2 debacle that Apple mistakenly assumed would go over well by forcing this "gift" on its consumers. Time for another FIX dear friends at Apple.

I also am having the same issue, but with a twist: I have NO music stored on my phone though any Apple-base app. I have no music in my iTunes. I only use Spotify and have that music saved locally.

And yet Apple PUSHES music to my phone. And tries to get me to buy it! Look:

I do not own that song, nor have I ever heard it. But there you see Apple trying to sell it to me. No, my music app isn't on - there is no music in it.

Very intrusive, Apple. Very intrusive.

EUREKA! Running new iPhone 5s with iOS 8.3.

Settings---> restrictions---> allow restrictions---> disable "CarPlay" app

I dont know where this app lives in the phone but it can be disabled. I've tried to manually search for it but no luck. The "restrictions" menu is the only place I can find it. My itunes no longer comes to life when plugged into USB radio! Hope this helps!!

neveremind. It just did it again.... Ugh

This does work. I have cellular Data off, so it only starts when there is a WiFi available.

Thanks for stating this so clearly. I just want to chime in and say "me too," to give everyone moral support. In my case, I need to launch Music and then flick it closed in order to stop the autoplay—and even then the fix is only temporary. As many have pointed out, this is not only illegal but highly unsafe.

oh no... I just deleted all music tracks I ever purchased on iTunes to stop Music from autoplaying. is it legal to harass users on selling/promoting products, especially when they drive?

emiliefromca wrote:

oh no... I just deleted all music tracks I ever purchased on iTunes to stop Music from autoplaying. is it legal to harass users on selling/promoting products, especially when they drive?

If you lack the self-control to avoid buying music while driving, you lack the self-control to be driving.

I had that exact same problem only since iOS 8.4, AppleMusic would autoplay the same track every time I start my car or plug my phone, forcing me to pause the track in the middle of driving. For my safety, I tried every tips said above, the only solution that works with the new iOS update is to delete on your iPhone all music you purchased on iTunes (you won't lose your music on desktop). That will prevent AppleMusic from autoplaying, as there's nothing to play anymore.

A quick way to delete your music on mobile is to delete music tracks by categories, as you may have a much great number of music artists. It took me 10 categories to delete: 30 secondes to solve my problem.

Make sure you have unsubscribed from the streaming version of AppleMusic, otherwise it'd play music they promote for purchase when you drive. You may not want to unsubscribe during your free trial, and you may end up making one single purchase, that would reactivate autoplay instantly.

Unfortunately, you can't unsubscribe on iPhone without unsubscribing on Mac too. But, for your drive safety, it is recommended to unsubscribe until Apple figures this problem out.

Hope it helped.

Meg St. Clair wrote:

"If you lack the self-control to avoid buying music while driving, you lack the self-control to be driving."

On the contrary it seems like no one is purchasing while driving, but Apple continues promoting tracks that autoplay when we drive, forcing drivers to stop paying attention to the road in order to pause the music track. Again, I think it's a serious problem for safety.

emiliefromca wrote:

Meg St. Clair wrote:

"If you lack the self-control to avoid buying music while driving, you lack the self-control to be driving."

On the contrary it seems like no one is purchasing while driving, but Apple continues promoting tracks that autoplay when we drive,

I don't have that problem with Apple Music. It has never "auto played" anything for me.