CarPlay disconnecting

It appears that in certain BMW cars where Carplay is wireless the connection is poor and carplay disconnects all the time. In some Evo ID5/ID6 units the WiFi antenna is missing. The Wifi antenna connects to the back of the unit which is very easy to take out (requires removal of 6 screws). It should be connected to the WLAN socket (the light blue connection on the right). Since I've connected it life is great and Carplay connection is excellent! WiFi antenna is cheap and can be easily ordered

I wanted to be sure I have a fix before I posted this. I have been following this thread very closely and have had multiple trips to the Audi dealer for my 2018 Q7 experiencing the same problems with my iPhone XS. After months of issues and trying everything posted here, I made some changes two weeks ago and haven't had any issues.

1. Turned off screen time tracking per another post (did not fix issue)
2. Deleted old MMI profiles from previous Audis (this did not fix the issue but I'm putting everything I did)
3. Turned off Activity Tracker for phone and all app under "Health"
4. Made sure Settings - Privacy -Location Services for all apps were either "Never" or "only when using"
5. Turned off Settings - Privacy -Location Services -System services for Location Based Alerts, location based apple adds, location based suggestions, all "product improvement"

I really think it's the activity tracker because if I left Pokemon Go on running in the background I would always have issues and there is a new feature for egg hatching on that app which used Activity tracking. I noticed my phone would have issues if it moved in a certain way or if I was going between service areas. It may have been the combination of 3&4. I haven't had any issues in two weeks where before I disconnected several times per day.

I posed this ...

I think I found the problem with the disconnect in CarPlay.

I have a KIA 2018 Stinger GT2. I have Had this problem for 4 months.

Are you ready .... Apple (iPhone) MAPS has been causing the issue.

I stumbled across it when I turned off the Radio and closed the apps on my iPhone.

Apple Maps popped up on my Radio. (Not the Nav that comes with the Radio) It was running. I didn't open it or use it! it must have been running in the back round using resources. I deleted the App from my iPhone. Thank god (Apple), lol allowed users to uninstall there apps.

Once I did that I rebooted the iPhone connected back using the same Lightning Cable and proceeded to see if every thing was still functioning, it was, then I took a drive. Everything is working perfectly. Even all the information for Waze, SiriusXM and other music providers are working great.

Been working with no issues for about 10 days straight. WOW, what a relief.

Funny thing though, every once and a while a little window comes up and reads "Apple maps needs to be installed. go to the apps store". LOL.

I have the same problem using iPhone X's and BMW 330e. After digging into it it seems that the car's WiFi is the culprit. What seems to to the trick is when reconnecting you should disable and enable Vehicle WiFi (uncheck and check) at the idrive menu at manage mobile devices -> settings. Then quickly to to your iPhone, disable WiFi and turn it on again. You'll see BMWxxxCarplay. Connect to it and then go to idrive in your car choose manage mobile devices check your iPhone and select apple car play. This will last for your journey. The problem with me that I have to repeat this almost every trip. I guess it's either a software defect of the head unit or a faulty WiFi antenna. Theater could be replaced. You can Google it.

ok - spent some time on a chat with apple support before resorting to har reboot. I ahd already done all the steps of software update, different cable, etc and isolated the problem to my phone. Solution was to rename the phone and to forget the car. when i reconnected with the cable to the car, the phone resynced to the car with the new name. drove around for several minutes past the time when the phone would usually disconnect. this time there was no issue and no disconnect. will monitor this. but this may just have done the job. very happy.

Wanted to chime in on this one as another forum member has...

At least for me, iOS 12.2 has appeared to resolve my CarPlay disconnection issues. I updated the day it came out and immediately began testing.. so far have seen zero disconnects.

For those still with disconnection issues, give 12.2 a try, given it's free and all.....

This is more for the BMW owners out there. After taking my 2018 M2 to 2 different dealership for a total of 5 visits I think my ApplyCarPlay/iDrive issue is finally amended. First of all the issues I had: I have a iPhone X and the first issue I noticed when I picked up my car last year brand new was that there were frequent "pauses" in music. When I say pause, the music on the screen still plays (time doesn't freeze), but there will be no sound. After having this issue, a more annoying issue came up. Randomly, the iDrive would start navigating itself without any of my commands. This includes going back and forth and also confirming on selections. Often, it starts when my CarPlay is engaged. This makes it impossible to take control of my phone as well as the car. It would go back and forth so quick that I can't even pull up my phone's camera to take a video or turn off the wifi/bluetooth. I would have to turn on airplane mode to regain control of my phone, the car itself with CarPlay disconnected would keep on freaking out selecting different things and going into different menus. I just turn down the volume until I can get somewhere safe to turn off the car and restart it to fix the issue. I taken it in to BMW multiple times and all they did was on the software side. They would re-flash and update and tell me to re-pair my phone with the car. It would help for a couple of days but never the less, the problem kept on resurfacing. This year, after taking my car out of hibranation, I had an incident where the glitch happened without the CarPlay being connected, this allowed me to take a video to show BMW. Fast forward another visit and another 2 videos that I took to show as proof. BMW decided to replace my head unit even though they couldn't find any error codes with the unit. (I presume without video proof, they can't replace the head unit under warranty if there are no error codes). The head unit for my car at least is the screen and computer module. I picked the car up yesterday and immediately took it on a road trip. After driving the car for roughly 7 hours, I think my ordeal is finally resolved. Before the replacement, the glitch with CarPlay connected would happen around 15~30 minutes of driving with of course the "pauses" in music. My standalone glitch without CarPlay connected has happened only once during my ownership. For my car at least, there is definitely something wrong with my iDrive system and having CarPlay on increases the frequency of the issue. During my 7 hour road trip, AppleCarPlay was perfect performing as intended. No glitches and absolutely no pauses in music. Changing songs or giving commands was also a lot quicker. My suggestion to BMW owners out there would be it is likely a hardware issue with the car rather than software or your phone. I realized this after the numerous times I dropped off my car for service and I had a rental bmw. In the rental bmw CarPlay works flawlessly which let me cross out that it is not a AppleCarPlay issue or a iPhone X issue.

You rock! This was the only thing that worked for my issue with CarPlay repeatedly disconnecting from Cadillac Cue, so much so it was rendered useless. I had the same issue with my car disconnecting from CarPlay in a rented Nissan Sentra. It was maddening.

For those looking to try it, change your phone's name by going into Settings > General > About > Name. The previous name of my phone was "iPhone." I changed it to my name and then went into Cue's CarPlay settings, deleted the device named "iPhone.," then added the device with the new name. It now seems to work.

If you have Cue, it may take a few seconds for Apple CarPlay to show up in place of Projection when you connect your device.

Get a. WiFi antenna (Google at eBay) and follow this guide for installationhttps://youtu.be/ncqGt_HUspo

Solved this for me today!!!!!!

I updated to iOS 12.2 and it appears to have resolved the problem. 4 days of usage with NO disconnects and NO freezes and NO audio interruptions.

iOS 13.2.2 fixed my carplay disconnects. I no longer have any sort of disconnects during navigation & listening to music as stated in my previous post. I’m using the iPhone XS Max.

There are two different way CarPlay connects to your the infotainment system in your car: Wired (typically through USB port) and Wireless (uses Bluetooth to initiate connection and transfers data through WiFi). For folks with wired connection, I recommend making sure the Lightning connection port on your phone is free of lint or debris. It is common problem for it to fill up with lint over time, eventually causing connectivity issues for the lightning cable.

BMW only offers wireless CarPlay (at least in both of my 2018 BMW models). Wireless disconnections are different, and I haven't found a way to reliably address the issues I am having. I've tried the suggest remedy of switching into airplane mode via settings, and the switching back, rebooting phone, restarting car. It did work for a while but problem returned during a long drive. Still trying to debug this. Apple recommend returning phone to factory settings, and setting up as new phone. Then add apps as needed and note if adding/using particular app is associated with issue starting.

Steps for returning to factory settings and setting up as new phone:

back up your phone: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977

restore to factory settings: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201252

I found that if the iPhone is charged to 100% before plugging it into the USB, CarPlay was stable & worked fine. I also found that only one USB port was susceptible to the issue; the second one was fine. 2019 Accord Hybrid, iPhone XR, iOS 12

I believe I solved it, and the solution is simple: unpair Bluetooth from the car or turn Bluetooth off on the phone when using Apple Car Play. My theory is that Bluetooth keeps trying to connect which interferes with the car play connection. Anyway, once I turned off Bluetooth on my phone the issue went away. Good luck!

An observation from research from what my local BMW dealership told me about a recent software upgrade recall for my X5 entertainment system. Each automobile company uses a different mobile operating system (OS) for their entertainment system. Most Asian companies use a variant of Android. For Ford it is variant of BlackBerry RIM. For BMW, it is Operating System 7.0 developed by the Nokia mobile OS development team. (see https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/30/why-bmw-is-betting-on-the-cloud/ for details)

Each OS has its own CarPlay interface (API) to communicate with the IOS CarPlay application. The tech challenge is keep both sides of the API in synch as each receives a new patch/SW upgrade. Following my recent BMX X5 OS7 upgrade, my iPhone Xr 13.12 IOS CarPhone version now syncs right up and stays that way. My conclusion - make sure both sides of your car-to-CarPlay SW are both patched to latest version.