Make Apple's CarPlay EXTRA Worth It (Apps & Tips)

Hey, it's Chris. And in today's video, we're gonna be talking about Apple's CarPlay, how to get more out of it. This is something I told you was coming up in the last video. So here it is as promised. This is gonna be kind of another long video because there's so much to talk about. So I'm gonna do what I did in the last few videos and timestamp everything that I mentioned down in the description. So go ahead and check that out. In this video though, I'm gonna be talking about how I personally interact with CarPlay on a given day. I'm gonna give you some CarPlay tips, both highly requested tips along with some stuff I've just discovered myself. I'm gonna cover the best CarPlay apps and how to effectively get more apps to work with CarPlay using Siri shortcuts. Also, I just have to mention DailyTag's dedication to bringing you guys content here on the channel. This video happened to hit right in the middle of the bomb cyclone. It's crazy. Like Monday, we wrote the script. Tuesday, did a little filming. This Wednesday was the day we were going out to like film out and about. And that's when this bomb cyclone hit. Like the tornado siren was going off. It was blizzardy, you could barely see. I had my parents calling up and texting. You can see it in the video being like, are you okay? I'm like, no, I'm just out filming this video. So it was crazy. So let me go ahead and just get started by talking about how I use CarPlay on any given day. So at the end of last year, I was looking for a new car and literally it was a deal breaker if it wasn't going to come with CarPlay. And maybe that sounds like stupid because why wouldn't a car come with CarPlay? Some cars don't come with CarPlay. Like Toyota is still just catching up with getting CarPlay in some of their vehicles. But yeah, having CarPlay even influenced like the trim level of the car that I ended up getting because I figured I didn't need the car's built-in navigation package if I had Apple Maps, for instance. So of course I use CarPlay for music. Shout out 116. Of course I use it for directions. Shout out Pablo's Coffee. I also use it for listening to podcasts and audio books if I'm going to be in the car for a long time. And one of my favorite things to do is listen at one and a half or two times speed. And I do that outside the car too because seriously, I can fit a 30 minute podcast into 15 minutes or an hour long whatever into 30 minutes. It's great. I love it. And actually you kind of get used to it after a while. It just seems kind of normal. Obviously I use it for texting. I love it for texting. In fact, super convenient. Although I wish that it didn't have to read my responses back every time before sending, but that's a little great. Phone calls too, obviously. I mean, not super surprising there. Now I told you what, like two videos ago that Reminders, Apple's default Reminders app kind of like runs my agenda, my schedule every single day more than a to-do list app or a calendar app. And that's exactly true in the car as well. I love setting and managing reminders in CarPlay. It works great. So CarPlay has become a huge part of my life recently and it's made the Apple ecosystem that much more valuable. So now when I'm driving, there's less downtime. In a workday, I can get a little work done while I'm cruising around. Whether it's communicating or making a note or checking on package deliveries or creating a to-do list, all of which I'll be talking about in just a minute. All right, let's get to some tips. And tip number one is to choose CarPlay over Android Auto if you have a choice, if you care about privacy. Using CarPlay over Android Auto is a great way to help protect your personal data, which is something you can just feel good about. I'm not saying that I hate Android Auto. Not saying that, so don't even think that. Obviously though, Apple's made a big deal about caring about users' privacy and their information and CarPlay is one area, surprising to many, where it's really easy to see that in action. Porsche actually released some info a while back that said the only info Apple collects from users using CarPlay is whether or not the car is accelerating while CarPlay is in use. Basically, Apple's just concerned with whether or not it's safe for you to use certain features or not. That's it. Android Auto, on the other hand, collects a lot more info, including your vehicle speed, your oil and coolant temperature, throttle position, engine revs even, stuff like that. Basically, it reveals a bunch of your car's onboard diagnostics, both to Google and potentially to car manufacturers as well. Now obviously, not everybody cares about privacy more than convenience, and if you fall into that latter category and you would rather use Google Maps or Waze, which is owned by Google, instead of Apple Maps, this is a great tip. Google Maps and Waze have been working with CarPlay for a while now, but they don't work with Siri in your car, at least not directly. If you'd like to use Siri to get directions using Waze, for instance, rather than Apple Maps, all it takes is the use of a Siri shortcut, and I'm gonna be talking a lot more about Siri shortcuts a little later in the video. So you could just create your own Siri shortcut, but I think for most people it's a lot easier to just use one that somebody else has made. So I'm gonna link up one down below that you can just click on and install into your Siri shortcuts app. Once you've got that shortcut installed, you'll need to record a phrase to activate it, something like, get directions in Waze. So here's a very simple tip, really just something to just point out. I'm not even sure how interesting or useful it is, but it has to do with switching between your most frequently used apps in CarPlay. At any given time in CarPlay, you can see the three latest app icons that you've used lined up along the left of the screen by the driver. So obviously you can just tap on the app that you wanna switch to, but I think in an effort to simplify things while you're driving, Apple made it so that tapping on the top app icon, the one that's already open, will also bring up the last app that was open. See, super simple. I don't even know why I included it here, honestly, other than to say, look, here's something in this video that you're not gonna find somewhere else because I haven't run into it. CarPlay is great. It's really made my car experience so much better. I love it, but there's been one thing that's really been bugging me, and that is glitches slash freeze-ups. Now, I don't know if it's Apple's fault or if it's the car manufacturer's fault. I kinda suspect the latter, but I don't know, but ah. So whenever this happens, I have to reset the head unit by going to factory reset within the car settings, and then that usually gives me an error, and then if I hold down the power knob for like a second or two, I get a beep, and then everything's reset, but I lose all my, say, radio stations and other stuff, but at least CarPlay's working again. By the way, just sort of like an FYI or a heads up, I was kinda reading around in some forums, and it sounds like if you reset things the wrong way, like maybe not through the menu like I was talking about, but by holding down a bunch of different buttons until some kind of screen that you're not supposed to access pops up, and then you reset, you might void your warranty, so probably proceed with caution. So according to a different car manufacturer than mine, Kia, actually, you might be able to significantly avoid these freeze-ups if you wait until your infotainment unit, ugh, infotainment, I hate that word. It's like prosumer, I hate that one too, but if you wait for your infotainment unit to fully boot up before plugging it in and connecting your phone. Now, I can't confirm that this tip 100% works, but I am gonna be trying it out because anything to avoid those freeze-ups. Just kind of a dumb secondary tip attached onto this tip, if your CarPlay does freeze up while you're out and trying to use it, you can always pop that phone into the cup holder and get a little bit better sound as it echoes and reverberates out. It's sort of like these players that don't have any components, but just sort of amplify the music coming out of the bottom of your iPhone. If you don't like the default way that your CarPlay apps are arranged up on the screen, you can absolutely reorder those, but it doesn't work the same way as it does on your iPhone where you tap and hold and wait for everything to start jiggling and dancing and then move it around. Instead, to rearrange your CarPlay apps, you gotta go to your phone settings and then CarPlay, and then you can just use your finger and rearrange stuff there. And some apps will even let you delete them if you just don't wanna see them, although a lot of them are permanent. Here's a super simple tip for anybody who has a hard time remembering where they parked, which if you're anything like me, that's a lot of the time anyways, or especially like when I'm traveling in a different city. So Apple Maps has this cool built-in feature that will show you on a map where you parked, but it's a feature that you have to enable. And to do that, you go to your phone settings, you go to map settings, and then scroll down to enable the show parked location option. Nice and simple. The one place this may not be too helpful though is in a parking garage, but otherwise, yeah, it's pretty dope. Okay, this next tip is by far the one that was most requested for me to cover in a CarPlay video, and that is how to stop audio from auto-playing when people get in and start up their car. For instance, let's say I've been listening to some Andy Minio, You Can't Stop Me, and I get home and I turn off the car and I unplug my phone and I go in, I do whatever I'm doing, and then whoa, I decide it's time to go to Starbucks because I need another nitro cold brew, which happens frequently. So I pop back into the car, plug in my phone, and get CarPlay going. Well, at that point, Andy Minio pops right back on and starts playing again because it just picks up right where I left off. And I know some other people have a different experience. It must have to do with different kinds of CarPlay or something. I don't know, it's beyond me because I only have used this one kind of CarPlay, but some people have it where it just starts playing like the alphabetical list of all their music, which would really not be cool. So here's the bad news. There's not really just a switch that you can flip and turn this off. But there are a few ways you can kind of manage it and deal with it a little bit better. One thing you can do is just tell Siri to stop playing once it starts going, but you're still gonna get blasted before you say it. Also, according to iMore, you can try to force quit an app by double tapping on the home button, but I haven't been able to get that to work. Finally, if CarPlay auto plays your songs in alphabetical order, and sorry, if it does, it's kind of funny, then you can at least try to load up a blank or noiseless track that starts with A in your library, which I'll link one up for you down below. You might not have realized this, but you can actually take screenshots of your CarPlay screen, and it couldn't be easier. Just take a screenshot on your iPhone while it's connected to CarPlay, and it'll grab the screen of your phone and your car. Now, why would you wanna do this? I'm not 100% sure myself, but maybe you wanna save a part of a song visually or a podcast and know where you're at or something. I don't know, but leave me a comment if you have a better use for this. You know how on your phone you can adjust the volume of your ringer and your music separately? Well, you can kinda do the same thing with Siri and audio in CarPlay. If you find that Siri is either too loud or too quiet, you can adjust the volume of it when it speaks to you, and it's super easy. Next time Siri talks to you in CarPlay, just adjust the volume while it's still talking to you, and it'll stay at that level. At least that's how it works in my CarPlay. Like, personally, I found that the default was just a little bit louder than I wanted, so I turned it down just a little bit, and now it's perfect. Now, at this point, when the next words that I say start coming out of my mouth and hitting you in the ears, you might think, uh, Chris, you are just an Apple employee trying to upsell me, but that's not the case. Apple's never paid me a dime, okay? Really, if you have CarPlay, it's a million percent worth it to also have an Apple Watch. Here's why. I like using my Apple Watch while I'm driving using Apple Maps to navigate somewhere because I like how it taps me on the wrist when it's time to make a turn. Now, this works without CarPlay, too. Like, if you're just using Apple Maps on your phone, but with CarPlay, it's even better. Is it navigation overkill? Maybe, but sometimes when I'm talking to somebody in the passenger seat, I'm not really paying attention to what Siri is telling me, so getting that tap on the wrist when it's almost time to turn, that's actually pretty useful. Okay, here's a scenario for you. Maybe you've got an older car. Nothing wrong with that. Gets you from A to Z, but you want CarPlay in there. Problem is, you don't want to replace the whole head unit to get CarPlay. Well, there's actually a pretty cool USB cable that can do this for you. USB cable, USB dongle, whatever. It's something that plugs into your old car and converts it into a CarPlay-capable ride, and it even comes with a steering wheel button controller as well. Now, I haven't tried this out personally, so make sure you do your research, but it does seem kind of cool, and I'll link it up down below. By the way, if you happen to be wondering, like, what's my favorite USB cord to use in my car, then I'll link that up down below along with some other CarPlay accessories that you can get over at MySlicedApple.com. For me, I like to use one that's shorter than longer so that it doesn't, like, wind around and wrap around all kinds of stuff. And I also got one that was black to not only match my phone and my case, but also the interior of my car in the little pocket cubby shelf thing that my phone fits in. But yeah, I'll link it up down below along with some other good options. Now, if you're an iPhone user and you just got CarPlay, I would not blame you for thinking that there must be a bunch of CarPlay apps out there waiting for you to install on your screen and start using. Well, here's the thing. There's not that many CarPlay apps out there. In fact, it's pretty slim pickings. Like, with a few exceptions, there's kind of just four main categories of apps for CarPlay, and your main thing is just to pick your favorite app from each category to use while you're out on the road. The four main categories I'm talking about are music, podcasts, maps, and audio books. For music, you're picking between things like Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, Tidal, et cetera. For podcasts, you're picking between things like Apple's official podcast app, Pocket Cast, Castro, Overcast, and maybe a couple others. For maps, it's pretty much between Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze. And for audio books, there's Apple's Books app through which you can buy audio books, Audible, of course, and audiobooks.com, as far as I know. There are some other apps out there too, like some sports apps from the NBA or the MLB, some radio apps like NPR, Vox, TuneIn, or Slacker, but that's really about it. There's not a huge catalog of apps to choose from. But all is not lost. There are some ways to expand your app selection beyond what's just available on that screen, and one of the best ways is just to use Siri to interact with some of the other Apple apps that don't have their own icons. Apple Notes is a great example. While driving, you can tell Siri, create new note, and then you can get your thoughts down while you're driving, which I think is super cool. Okay, I created a note. It says I am making a note using CarPlay, and it works really well. I'm glad this feature exists. I played around with a couple other Apple apps too to see what I could get to work, and I'd kinda recommend that you just try that out for yourself as well. One other thing that I did get to work though was just having Siri set an alarm for me in the morning. Okay, it's on. Hey, it's something, that counts. The other way to get more apps to work with your CarPlay unit is to use Siri shortcuts. Now, they do take a little bit of extra time to get set up, but it's 100% worth it. For instance, I set up a Siri shortcut for the Deliveries app that lets me check on my next delivery, and lo and behold, it works in CarPlay. You don't have any deliveries with an estimated date. You do have one delivery without a date. I also set up a Siri shortcut for Things, the popular to-do list app, which lets me add a to-do item to my to-do list, and it worked perfectly, which was really exciting. Okay, Things added. Reach one million subscribers to the inbox list. See, that's like a major App Store app. Everybody knows about Things. It doesn't have its own CarPlay app, but I just got it to work. Another shortcut that I got to work is for the popular weather app, Dark Sky, which lets me check the Dark Sky forecast. It is 32 degrees and snow and windy. Windy throughout the day and snow, 3-6 inches until this evening. Dark Sky, I don't know. It's just more reliable, in my opinion. I tried getting one of my favorite apps, Drafts, to work, but it just told me this. Dictate new draft. To do that, you'll need to continue on iPhone when you're not driving, of course. And the same thing goes for voice memos. To do that, you'll need to continue on iPhone when you're not driving, of course. So I did have some successes and failures trying to get Siri shortcuts to work with CarPlay, but in my opinion, it was worth it because I did expand what I could do. Something that you should mess around with, I think. I would recommend it. So that's it for this video. I'm not gonna be responding to comments due to the bomb cyclone. It already threw this week totally out of whack, but let me know if that's something that you miss and if you want it to continue in the next video. So continue to leave me your comments and I'll see about answering those. I would love to know what your favorite CarPlay tips or tricks are, how you use it, anything that I left out, what your favorite stuff was to learn from this video. That would be great. Also, I got a great Apple Music video that I just published before this, which kind of ties into CarPlay. So I'm gonna link that up down below for you as well. Don't forget, you can follow at Daily Tech, spelled Daily T-E-K-K on Instagram and Twitter, and I'll catch you guys in the next video. Later.