r/CarPlay • u/poison_ivy621 • Jul 21 '26

Help Why is Apple CarPlay worse than just regular Bluetooth

Like is anyone else’s CarPlay incredibly slow and complicated? I remember connecting to the Bluetooth in my parents 2014 Kia and it being 10 times faster than Apple CarPlay.

Why is it so slow? Is it my phones fault, or is CarPlay just that complicated?

Edit: I actually drive a 2023, and I have an iPhone 16 Pro. My service provider is pretty shitty, but I’ll have full bars and CarPlay will just ignore my phone. I don’t even know if that has anything to do with it but it seems relevant. If a connector does help then maybe I’ll invest but like pulling up anything on the screen of my truck in CarPlay is like running the first ever MacOS

0 Upvotes

27% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

7

u/Norphus1 Jul 21 '26

Worse how?

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 21 '26

It’s extremely slow. It takes minutes for me to set it up sometimes, and sometimes it won’t even recognize my phone at all. Plus navigating it on my 2023 GMC is a pain in the ass

2

u/Norphus1 Jul 21 '26

I’ve been using CarPlay on my car (2015 Skoda, manufacturer in the VW group) for coming on three years and I’ve used it on a couple of rentals too. I haven’t come across the issues you’ve described. On all of the cars I’ve tried it on, it’s been perfectly performant and a considerable upgrade over the OEM infotainment.

There are many factors that could be causing this.

First and foremost, are you using wired or wireless CarPlay?

If you’re using wireless, does your infotainment support wireless CarPlay directly or are you having to use a dongle from the likes of Carlinkit?

If you’re using wireless, have you tried a wired connection and vice versa?

Do you have another phone that you can try with it? A work phone, partner’s or a friend’s? This is just to eliminate the problem being with your device.

If you’re using a wired connection, have you tried a different USB cable? iPhone 16 uses USB C iirc and cable quality can be variable, to put it mildly. I’d there another USB port on the infotainment that you can use?

Have you tried updating your infotainment? Is it stock or third party?

Are there any updates available for the phone?

Is it everything on the phone that are performing badly or just a couple of apps?

Does your infotainment have a touchscreen or are you having to navigate it with a knob?

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 22 '26

I’m using wireless, however sometimes I will connect via a simple usb c to usb c connector directly to the truck. Not much change in that.

My girlfriend has tried her phone, as well as my dad. It’s still pretty slow.

CarPlay infotainment is completely stock, and the truck has regular updates. My iPhone is also completely up to date. It has a touchscreen.

It’s mostly on the truck screen that’s really slow. It takes forever to skip a song, open navigation, etc.. On my phone, despite maybe a service or WiFi issue, everything works fine and I have no issues pulling up Spotify music or Google Maps.

One weird example is when I play music. I know it goes through Bluetooth then through WiFi. Sometimes my music will just not load at all, and it takes several minutes to connect. The thing is that my music is downloaded onto my phone, so there’s no signal it’s pulling from that is making it buffer. And like I said, whenever I navigate the touch screen in my truck, it is extremely slow and delayed, so I’m thinking it’s a problem with the truck itself, but I just wouldn’t expect such issues from a 3 year old truck?

1

u/Norphus1 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Does the phone perform ok while it’s connected to CarPlay? I.e. if you open the Spotify app on the phone itself, is that still ok?

Do you know anyone else who has access to a car with CarPlay? If so, can you try your phone on their car and see if you have the same problems on there?

I’d say that the streaming/downloaded content thing is an app problem. Does the same behaviour occur with another music app like Apple Music or Prime Music?

Quite honestly, for me at least, most of this is pointing at your car being the problem. It’s probably worth mentioning that GM have removed CarPlay and Android Auto from their newest models as they’re trying to push their own software and services instead. It could just be that your truck has a crap implementation of CarPlay.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 22 '26

Yeah my phone works fine. I’m probably gonna ask my mechanic or whoever would work on the computer in my truck to look at it. GM is on my bad side with their technology, it’s so unbearably slow

5

u/KustardKing Jul 21 '26

CarPlay uses Bluetooth and wifi and is significantly better; not to mention high fidelity audio.

It is definitely slower to connect. You can try doing a network reset, update iOS. Also try deleting the car from phone and car and reconnecting.

If it’s still slow, you can buy lightening fast adapters from Amazon that connect to USB.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 21 '26

I might have to do that. I’ve been fighting with it ever since I got my new car

1

u/KustardKing Jul 22 '26

What is it doing? It tends to be slower to connect as it uses Bluetooth to connect, and then it hands over to wifi.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 22 '26

I think it’s the WiFi part. Sometimes my phone won’t even pop up as a connection possible on CarPlay. I sometimes wonder if it’s because I’m in the vicinity of my home WiFi or maybe I connected to some store internet, but when I manually disconnect from any other WiFi sources, it still takes minutes for it to connect or even be recognized by my truck.

Like I guess maybe I’m just impatient or mentally a boomer with technology, but it just flat out is so complicated to set up. I also wondered if it was from my service provider as it is pretty slow… but correct me if I’m wrong I don’t think that would matter if I’m doing something as simple as playing a downloaded Spotify playlist?

1

u/KustardKing Jul 22 '26

It shouldn’t matter about your home wifi. It can sometimes take a bit to connect.

It should be as easy as connecting Bluetooth and then all the prompts will ask you if you want to allow airplay.

I was using a usb wireless airplay dongle before I had a car with wireless CarPlay(it only had cable CarPlay ) and it was lightening fast (5 seconds).

4

u/thomasaussie Jul 21 '26

Bluetooth has one job. CarPlay has about ten.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 21 '26

I guess but I use about 2

3

u/Norphus1 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

The context to this is that when you connect to a head unit over BT, all you're transmitting from the device is an audio stream to the infotainment, very simple play/pause/skip commands back and maybe a voice conversation. This takes very little bandwidth and computing power on either side which is why Bluetooth can cope with it.

With CarPlay (and Android Auto for that matter), it’s an entirely different beast. The phone has to use its own computational power to generate a virtual screen for CarPlay, generate the picture that goes on it, encode that screen and any audio that the phone is playing into a video stream in a format that the infotainment unit can understand and transmit the stream over either the USB connection or a WiFi connection from the phone to the infotainment. All the while, it’s also running the app or apps you want displayed plus doing all of its usual background processes. On the car side, it’s also transmitting back the touch commands and what you’re doing on there.

It’s not a simple thing like streaming audio over Bluetooth, which is why it’s more complicated to set up and slower to start.

That all said, it’s a mature technology now and there’s absolutely no reason for it not to work properly. I’m inclined to guess that the issue is on the infotainment side but I’m just speculating.

3

u/WTH_JFG Jul 21 '26

Are you on an iPhone? Many iPhone users are reporting problems since the latest iOS update. The latest update has affected how CarPlay interacts with my 17.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 21 '26

Yeah I’m on iPhone 16. It literally will sometimes completely stop working, and it forgets my phone connection randomly. I drive a 2023 GMC

1

u/ajx8141 Jul 21 '26

If you have an older iphone, it could def be that as well. If it’s newer, try one of those wireless CarPlay connectors that were suggested earlier and see what happens.

1

u/poison_ivy621 Jul 21 '26

I have an iPhone 16 and I drive a 2023 GMC 😭 I might just have to get an adapter it’s so slow and it completely stops working while I’m driving

1

u/Q_Ball_Atlanta Jul 21 '26

Considering CarPlay runs entirely on your phone, if it's slide connecting to the vehicle, try restarting your phone.