iPhone 6 Plus Car Play no longer works

Question

Level 1

18 points

iPhone 6 Plus Car Play no longer works

I believe I've nailed down a bug. And I can only confirm it with Apple iPhone 6 Plus.

Issue: If you Reset your iPhone 6 Plus, your device will no longer work with Apple Car Play (more specifically the Alpine ilx-007).

Brief: I bought the Alpine ILX-007 to use with my iPhone 6. At first it worked alright, but every 15 to 20 minutes or so it would disconnect, it would drop calls, or just not work. Unplugging it and plugging it back into the USB sometimes fixed the issue, but it was always a temporary fix. Consulting with the stereo manufacturer, they advised that I reset my iPhone. Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Doing so wiped everything and returned me to a "stock" iphone. When I plugged in the iPhone this time, I got an instant pop up (paraphrasing) "This USB device is not supported". I went from being able to connect to Car Play but not having it work properly, to not being able to connect at all, whatsoever. At the shop we plugged in two other iPhones, a 5 and another 6 plus and both of them worked with car play.

Full story below;

I went home and did a restore to a previous backup (to no avail), and then I did another reset, but neither fixed the issue. From then on, I could only get the "USB device not supported" message whenever I plugged in that phone.

I returned the phone to the Apple store. They swapped my phone on the spot and I got a new iPhone 6 plus (thanks!). I downloaded two songs to test out the head unit when I returned to my car and car play worked 100% just fine.

I returned home to restore my phone and data from a backup and iTunes went from 8 minutes to restore, to 40 minutes, to 8 hours. It hung at 8 hours and didn't budge. I only had 500 songs to sync. I removed my phone from the computer and restarted it. Nothing out of the ordinary it worked fine. But because it was restoring and got hung, I decided to wipe it back to stock via Reset, just to be sure there wasn't going to be any issues. After resetting the phone, I plugged it back into the computer, synced all of my songs back to the phone no problem. Excited, I ran back to my car and plugged it in... "This USB device is not supported".

Looking back, the only thing that happened both times was the phone was Reset. I thought about the incomplete restore possibly causing an issue, but everything other than car play works fine AND when I did the original reset, there was no restoration involved. All I did was reset the phone.

I believe a driver, or some file or something that is necessary for Car Play does not get restored when you Reset your phone. Everything other than Car Play seems to be working just fine.

I could go back to the apple store, say its not working again and possibly get another swap, but I don't wish to waste more phones, nor do I want to have to hope that I never need to reset or wipe my phone in order to enjoy music in my car. So as of right now, I have an iPhone 6 that works well (outside of car play) and a brand new $800 head unit that only lets me listen to the radio 😝

Please look into this, I really wanted car play to work and enjoy my phone and car synchronization but at this point I'm frustrated and disappointed to be honest. I'm posting this bug to help keep other customers from ending up in this same situation, and hopefully you all can find and fix the problem.

Thanks for your time, hope to hear back.

-Larry Charles

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 8.3

Posted on May 8, 2015 11:12 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Apr 24, 2017 11:24 AM in response to flip5577

The only thing I've been able to do to get CarPlay to connect on my Honda Pilot 2017 is to to connect the phone and then turn the ignition but not the engine on. Wait about 5 seconds, then turn the engine on. That works, but it's obviously a pain. It astonishes me how bad the compatibility is with Apple CarPlay.

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 2, 2017 3:42 PM in response to flip5577

I also have this problem. I have an iPhone 6S Plus running iOS 10.3.2. My phone used to run CarPlay on my car (2016 Buick LeCrosse) perfectly. Now when I plug the phone in I get a message about the item "not being supported". There's some sort of problem here---and I don't think it's with my car.

Reply

Answer 3

Jun 14, 2017 9:52 PM in response to Mark Faucette

Hi

Had the same issue using an iPhone 6.

iPhone 6s in the same car had no problems.

I deleted the car from the CarPlay menu in settings -> general. (Remove car)

Deleted the network settings like suggested in this thread. Turned Siri OFF and back on.

Then it worked again.

Br

Steffen

Reply

Answer 4

rb38

Level 1

4 points

Jun 28, 2017 5:54 PM in response to flip5577

I have a 2016 Chevy Silverado. CarPlay worked for over a year and then one day just stopped. After reading the issues everyone had I tried:

Deleted the CarPlay connection on both the truck and phone. That didn't work.

Deleting the Bluetooth connection between the truck and phone; both on the phone and in the truck. That didn't work.

Disabled Siri, re-enabled Siri. Plugged the cable from the truck to the phone and CarPlay worked.

Reestablished the Bluetooth and everything works correctly.

Reply

Answer 5

iantoss

Level 1

4 points

Jul 31, 2017 5:37 PM in response to flip5577

Hi-this happened to me...audi A4-2017, iPhone 7. Car Play disappeared. Nothing to do with the cord (using an apple lightening). Go to your audio system settings and reset to factory. When you plug your phone in, CarPlay will fire up......

Reply

Answer 6

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,371 points

Oct 26, 2017 1:30 PM in response to GoesWrongWay

Is the wife's 6s on the same iOS are your iPhone 8? Does Chevy say that it supports the latest iOS? If your phone before the iPhone 8 is still listed in the system, and you restored from a backup and the phone is named the same, you may need to rename your phone and/or remove the earlier phone from the system and connect again.

Reply

Answer 7

flip5577 Author

Level 1

18 points

May 9, 2015 7:04 PM in response to flip5577

Update: The issue is also now confirmed with iPhone 5 models as well. My friend had to reset her 5, and I tested it with the same car play unit as well, same result. But when we tested a 5 that had not yet been reset, Car Play worked fine.

Reply

Answer 8

flip5577 Author

Level 1

18 points

May 11, 2015 5:29 PM in response to flip5577

Went to the Apple store and worked with a technician there for about an hour and we got it all figured out. The bug is in fact confirmed! (But the good news is you can undo the damage). You have to wipe and restore your iphone through itunes, not using reset but restoring it as a brand new iphone. (***** but that's the only way we got it to work again).

1- If you RESET your Car Play capable iphone, it will lose Car Play capability when the reset has finished.

2- If you Restore your phone as a new iphone, you will regain Car Play capability.

Proof: When the technician did a hard wipe of my phone and restored it as a new iphone, I went to my car and plugged it in. Car Play was properly enabled. Immediately, I reset my iphone. After the reset finished I plugged in my iphone and "USB device not supported" message comes up, Car Play gone... I went back into the apple store, got the technician to do another restore as new iphone, then back to my car and Car Play was working again.

Reset: Keep in mind, when I say reset, I dont mean turning the phone off and on (just in case). I mean going into the settings of the iphone and selecting reset. Somehow something required for carplay is not included or changed in the reset. The only fix that has worked thus far is to fully wipe the iphone, (DONT RESTORE from a back up), and sync your phone and put all of your data back on that way. The restore didnt work when I tried it.

Reply

Answer 9

Fratam

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2015 2:27 PM in response to flip5577

I have the same problem here in holland

my iphone 6 plus (8.3) is not working with carplay on my new pioneer SPH-DA120

thanks for the tips

i will try tomorrow and let you know if it works then

Reply

Answer 10

Jun 13, 2015 1:31 PM in response to Fratam

As stated in another topic, please check your Siri settings on your iPhone. By default this is disabled, enabling Siri enabled all features on the Pioneer. They should state this in their manual tbh!

Reply

Answer 11

yuppiyo

Level 1

8 points

Jul 4, 2015 12:31 PM in response to flip5577

What did the technician say? I got this same behavior now with my iPhone 6 (not +). The iPhone 6 of my wife is working perfectly, only mine is first connecting (sound 1) and losing connection (sound 2).

Reply

Answer 12

Jul 8, 2015 5:08 PM in response to flip5577

Ugh, I had this happen, too, with my iPhone 6 Plus and the Alpine Carplay stereo. So I've done a complete wipe and set up my iPhone as a "new iPhone", and the Carplay now works... but how do I get all my data back on the phone without doing a Restore iPhone, which will screw up Carplay again?

Reply

Answer 13

Oct 19, 2015 11:14 AM in response to flip5577

Sorry to inform you that I did this with a Six plus; restored as a new phone and it worked fine.

Two days later with my faith restored in Apple, I bought a 6s plus, made the shop install IOS 9.02 and restored as a new phone. Well. it worked great or a week and now I'm back where I was with the old phone. Sometimes it drops out in less than a minute and other times longer than that; sometimes I get the message 'USB device not supported'. I can't keep wiping the phone and doing a new phone restore because it screws up my remote access apps for work and I have to go cap in hand to I.T for them to reregister the app.

What I have noticed driving home from work this evening though is if, as soon as it drops out whilst playing a track I hit the home button, the phone's screen lights back up and it thinks for a second or so then the head unit display lights up again and it moves on to another track. This is infinitely better than having to listen to BBC radio however, it doesn't last the length of a song and I have no idea what the next song will be even when not in shuffle mode.

I lodged a call from Apple and I was explaining it all yet again to some dude in the states, the call dropped out. That was an hour and a half ago!

A month ago I had a lengthy chat with a Senior Advisor in the states who was very supportive and promised to escalate this with the SooperAppleTechies, and would get right back to me...that was a month ago!

So far I've tried:-

Turn autolock off

Turn on and off restrictions (this seemed to have some effect whilst sitting in the car without the engine running but it dropped out the next day)

Continue to navigate through itunes, podcasts, maps seems to keep it going for longer then it just locks up.

Turn off finger print recognition

Deleting Ecoute (third party music player)

Turn off VPN

Turn off bluetooth

Turn off 'Show Apple Music'

Downloaded latest Tunelt app for Alpine

There appears to be no rhyme nor reason for this horrible glitch other than the so-called upgrade to IOS 8.4 and the introduction of Apples 'MuSicK' APp.

Lessons learned - don't upgrade to the next IOS software in haste and don't listen to the platitudes Apple's advisors offer unless you want to listen to your iphone in the car with headphones.

Reply

Answer 14

Worldin

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2015 3:54 PM in response to Rertieredfern

I solved my problem without having to do restores/erases etc. I have a 2016 VW golf se. I went into the menu settings which had its on section for app-connect. Through there I was able to locate he device again. Been working fine for a few weeks now.

Reply

Answer 15

Oct 24, 2015 3:21 AM in response to Rertieredfern

Update,

Following Apple's unprecedented release of IOS 9.1 which actually lists improved stability for CarPlay...it still drops out exactly as before. Knowing Apple, it will now be months before a software update and there's nor guarantee that they will ever fix it.

I will try a full restore today and report back...don't hold your breath!

Reply