Apple CarPlay In iOS 14: All New Features

Apple's new iOS 14 offers new and improved features meant to give users the best iPhone experience yet. Some of these enhancements come in the form of improvements to CarPlay.

Here's a quick look at the new features iOS 14 brings to CarPlay.

Carplay Wallpapers

CarPlay users will no longer have to stay stuck with a black wallpaper once iOS 14 arrives because the new iOS version brings wallpaper support for CarPlay. This feature will allow users to change the background wallpaper at any given time.

While that might sound interesting for some, it's worth noting that Apple only offers a few wallpapers at the moment. Users will only be able to choose from five pre-loaded wallpapers, in addition to a solid black or solid white background. Users won't be able to use custom images yet. Still, the feature will change how CarPlay looks, and will give it a different feel even from the user's iPhone.

Improved Messaging and VoIP Apps

The iOS 14's API improvements can be expected to result in improved overall CarPlay experience across audio, messaging and VoIP apps. Audio apps can be expected to offer better features, such as the ability to show album art within lists, while messaging apps can be expected to offer improved features such as the ability to show contact lists and previous conversations.

Improvements to Siri

Apple also added some improvements that will allow users to send audio messages to family and friends using Siri. Users will also be able to share ETAs with others using the digital assistant. This new feature comes as an addition to Siri's existing text messaging capabilities in CarPlay.

Support for new App categories

CarPlay gains added support for new app categories. These include apps that will prove helpful to users, such as food delivery apps, parking apps, apps that can provide details regarding EV charging stations and so on.

Horizontal Status Bar

iOS 14 will give users the option to move the status bar to the bottom of the screen if their car uses a portrait display. This allows for a better layout, iPhoneHacks noted.

Chinese and Japanese Keyboard Support

iOS 14 will allow CarPlay to support Chinese and Japanese keyboards, helping to improve the user experience for those who use them.