Apple CarPlay is a new feature that allows you to use your iPhone in your car. It allows you to access all of the features of your phone without having to take it out of your pocket. This article will cover some of the best apps for CarPlay.
The first app we will talk about is Google Maps. This app allows you to search for places near you and gives you directions on how to get there with the help of voice commands. Another great app is Waze which helps drivers avoid traffic jams on their way home from work or school. If you want a more entertaining experience then check out Spotify which provides free music streaming services as well as an option for premium membership at an extra cost.
If you like playing games during long road trips then check out Clash Royale which allows players compete against each other online in real-time battles or Words With Friends which lets users play against each other in turn-based games where players must find words on a grid before their opponent does so they can win points by doing so!
Best Apps For Carplay
Apple CarPlay overrides your car’s native infotainment system and promises to put a familiar, distraction-free interface right at your fingertips. It’s also loaded with compatible third-party apps that give your car nearly the same level of functionality as your iPhone or iPad. We’ve put together a list of the best CarPlay apps available in July 2020.
CONTENTS
Waze
TomTom Go Navigation
TuneIn
iHeartRadio
Dash Radio
Further reading
Best iPhone apps
Coolest car accessories
Best Mac apps
Waze
With an incredibly useful, crowdsourced mix of information — from snapshots of real-time traffic, locations of the cheapest gas stations, and updates on traffic incidents and accidents — Waze is one of the best navigation apps available. You can access it on your dashboard via CarPlay and always find the fastest route home. You can also listen to music or podcasts from within the app. If you aren’t keen on Apple Maps or Google Maps, then Waze is a solid alternative. Most recent versions make sharing your drive with friends and family easier.
iOS
TomTom Go Navigation
If you seek an alternative from Waze, have a look at TomTom Go Navigation. The ad-free app’s maps are customizable based on what you need, and you can save offline maps. Weekly app updates help you avoid traffic tie-ups with intelligent routes and alternative routes in response to construction, accidents, and other obstacles. You get a heads-up on which lanes lead to junctions and exits accompanied by moving lane guidance, speed alerts, and warnings. The app stores habitual and popular destinations and scenic areas, helps you get to locations from geotagged photos, and lets you share your ETA with people who are awaiting you.
iOS
TuneIn
TuneIn Radio has one of the largest selections of content on the planet. Download this app and get access to more than 120,000 stations. You can stream real-time audio from radio stations all around the world, and access sports, news, music, and a variety of other popular formats. A premium subscription comes with a few added perks. For example, the service, for $10 a month, provides play-by-play access to a host of sports, so you never have to miss a beat when it comes to your favorite NFL or MLB team. You also gain access to more than 130 ad-free music stations.
iOS
iHeartRadio
The iHeartRadio app is a great way to discover AM and FM radio stations from around the globe. If you want to listen to your favorite podcast or check out the latest sports scores, this app has you covered. iHeartRadio will even collect the songs you like as you listen, and create a personalized station just for you. Like most radio apps, you can also snag a premium subscription, which allows you to save and replay songs from the radio, create unlimited playlists, and skip as many tracks as you like. Currently, there are two premium options available: iHeartRadio Plus, for $6 per month, and iHeartRadio All Access, for $13 per month. Here’s how to add iHeartRadio on your car via Apple CarPlay. Recent versions let you share a live station or a song on that station with your friends and family, access recently played content in your library, and listen to podcasts at 0.5x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, and 2x speeds. Siri shortcuts let you access iHeartRadio from Siri suggestions and voice commands and share via Snapchat.
iOS
Dash Radio
Over-the-air commercial radio doesn’t hold a candle to Dash Radio, a free, digital broadcasting platform that features 24/7 livestreaming with popular DJs, personalities, and curators on over 75 original ad-free stations. The app features genuine humans playing music, just like the old days when radio stations were local and catered to the listening public rather than homogenized market research — no algorithms second-guessing your tastes.
iOS
Overcast
If you like podcasts and you’re looking for an alternative to Apple’s proprietary podcast app, have a look at Overcast. This app comes with a myriad of welcome features, including voice boost and smart speed, the latter of which allows you to speed up conversations without distorting the audio. You can also search, browse, or download podcasts for offline use. The app features push notifications, too, so you’ll never miss a new episode of your favorite podcast. It’s currently chock-full of ads, though you can purchase a premium subscription for $10 a year for ad-free listening. Recent versions feature improved search and sync, shared clips up to 90 seconds long, and customized podcast downloading, deleting, and sorting.
iOS
Audible
Amazon owns Audible, so if you’re already a Prime member, you’ll have access to Audible Channels, which offers exclusive original series and features one of the largest selections of audiobooks around. All of your favorite audiobooks are here, whether you’re into psychological thrillers, medieval epics, or something else entirely. The app also lets you navigate via chapter and download individual chapters for offline use. You can even make clips of your favorite passages to share with friends and family. Updates let you use credits to add titles to your library right from the app and improved VoiceOver support. A $15 per month subscription is available for non-Prime members that lets you choose one audiobook and two Audible Originals per month.
iOS
Audiobooks.com
If you’re planning a long drive, or just like to listen to audiobooks on your way to work, then you may want to take a look at Audiobooks.com. You can download audiobooks straight to your iPhone without having to sync with your computer, or you can just choose to stream them over Wi-Fi or through your data connection. The app has a selection of featured samples that you can listen to and a huge library of over 8,000 free titles. You get your first premium audiobook for free, and then you can choose a new one every month for $15 per month. Recent updates add a podcast feature that lets you access over 700,000 podcasts and makes discovering new audiobooks easy by letting you follow authors, narrators, and book series, and receive notifications about new releases.
iOS
Free Audiobooks
If you’re a public domain aficionado, Free Audiobooks has your number. Not only does it offer classics, romances, mysteries, poetry, and other free content, it also features professionally narrated premium free content that you can search by author, title, or narrator. You can stream or download books directly to your phone for offline listening and navigate the narrative with this streamlined app.
iOS
NPR One
Here’s an app for listening to shows and podcasts from NPR and local public radio. You’ll have access to the shows that you already follow, and the app also lets you listen to any news that you missed with its Catch Up section. The more you use the NPR app, the more it will learn what you like and bring you the stories that matter most to you. From news to podcasts, NPR One has something for everyone, and it’s very easy to use. Recent versions have improved VoiceOver support with an interface that spans the edges of newer iPhone models.
iOS
MLB At Bat
If you like baseball, you’re probably already familiar with this app. MLB.com At Bat has everything you need to know about baseball. One of the standout features of the app on the iPhone is the ability to watch videos. You won’t be able to watch videos while driving, of course, but you can listen to any games available through the radio feature. You get access to stats, breaking news, schedules, and more. Subscription prices are $3 per month or $20 per year, and you need to subscribe to access the radio feature. New releases introduce MLB.TV Live Rewind, which gives you DVR-like control over your MLB.TV stream with Pause and Resume, scrub to past action, watch with delay, or go back to live anytime features. Alternate Audio lets you listen to radio announcers while watching live or archived MLB.TV streams, or remove the commentary in favor of the Park Audio option, which lets you hear the sound of live gameplay in the ballpark.
best apps for carplay reddit
Best Apple CarPlay apps: what are the best in-car iPhone choices?
By Alistair Charlton published October 08, 2021
The best Apple CarPlay apps to get before you get behind the wheel
Best Apple CarPlay apps
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple CarPlay has been with us for almost six years now. Launching with iOS 7.1 back in 2014, CarPlay revolutionized the car infotainment experience, doing away with the often sub-par software created by car manufacturers themselves, and replacing it with an interface run by your iPhone.
CarPlay makes it easy for iPhone users to access apps like Phone, Maps and Messages via their car’s own touchscreen dashboard display, working much like Android Auto does for Android users.
CarPlay apps from Apple and third-party developers are redesigned so that they are safe to use while driving. This often means their user interfaces are simplified, with less text and fewer icons to distract you from the road ahead. Instead, Siri is used by many CarPlay apps – for example, to read out incoming iMessages, and dictate your replies.
Sponsored Links
Millionaire Trader Drops Bombshell: “The Only Trade You Will Ever Need”
VisionaryProfit
You can’t play games or watch video with CarPlay, even while parked, but the system has gained new features over the years to make better use of the ever-larger displays fitted to most cars. And, while the app selection is closer to dozens than thousands, there are still plenty of CarPlay apps to install, keeping you entertained, connected, and informed while behind the wheel.
RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU…
We’ve gathered up some of our favorite CarPlay apps, spanning the system’s cornerstones of navigation, entertainment, and communication. So grab some of our suggestions below and give your car’s touchscreen an upgrade.
Best Apple CarPlay apps
Spotify
Spotify
(Image credit: Spotify Ltd.)
Unless you’re an Apple Music obsessive, you’re going to want to access an alternative music app while driving. Thankfully, CarPlay works with pretty much all of them, including Amazon Music, Google Play Music, Tidal, and of course Spotify.
Like all CarPlay apps, Spotify has a clean and simple interface for browsing through your music collection by playlist, artist, album, or song. There are also options to browse for new music, and Spotify Radio, which serves up music Spotify thinks you might like based on what you normally listen to.
BBC Sounds
BBC Sounds
(Image credit: BBC)
You can always listen to the car radio without CarPlay, but we reckon BBC Sounds is a better option. As well all of the Beeb’s digital stations, you can use Sounds to listen to podcasts from the like of Louis Theroux, previously-played shows saved in the archive, and anything you have already downloaded onto your phone.
The CarPlay version of BBC Sounds also gives access to the Browse section for discovering new music, podcasts, and other recommendations. As well as the normal play and pause controls, the CarPlay interface lets you skip forward or backwards by 20 seconds – handy if you zoned out of a podcast, or want to skip the news segment of a downloaded radio show.
WhatsApp
WhatsApp
(Image credit: WhatsApp Inc.)
CarPlay of course has access to Apple’s own iMessage system, but thankfully WhatsApp is available too. Notifications come through to the CarPlay home screen just as they do with iMessages, appearing briefly at the top of the screen to show you which contact or group chat they are from.
However, like all the CarPlay versions of messaging apps, incoming messages cannot be read from the screen. Instead, Siri can read them out to you with a tap of the display, or you can save them for later if you’d rather your passengers didn’t hear the latest developments from that stag do group chat you forgot to mute. Siri can also be used to dictate replies, just as with iMessage.
Google Maps
Google Maps
(Image credit: Google LLC)
Apple Maps is available through CarPlay by default, but if your navigation preferences sit on the other side of the fence, Google Maps is here to help.
Simplified and pared down, Google Maps for CarPlay is still the navigation system you know and love, complete with live traffic, automated rerouting to avoid heavy traffic, and the dulcet tones of the Google Assistant telling you where to go.
Google Maps for CarPlay has also been updated to appear in the new Dashboard view of CarPlay, which shows your navigation, plus music controls (and more, if the car has a larger display) all at once.
Waze
Waze
(Image credit: Waze Inc.)
If you prefer your routing crowd-sourced, then you’ll want to install Waze. Owned by Google since 2013, Waze is a navigation app, but one which relies heavily on crowd-sourced information to help warn you of incidents and traffic jams, and offer handy alternate routes.
Although simplified for the CarPlay experience, Waze still retains its distinctive interface, complete with icons to show where fellow users have reported traffic and other issues on your route.
Unfortunately, while Google Maps now appears on the Dashboard screen, Waze doesn’t at the time of writing, so for now it can only be viewed full screen in CarPlay and not alongside your music playback controls. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
TomTom GO Navigation
TomTom GO Navigation
(Image credit: TomTom)
Buying dedicated navigation systems from TomTom might not be a thing anymore, but the routing giant is still very much in the race. The firm’s Go Navigation app for iOS is CarPlay-friendly, with detailed offline maps saved on your phone, live traffic, and speed camera locations.
TomTom’s maps are customizable, showing only the information you need, and they are updated weekly to help account for routes altered due to roadworks, and new speed limits. Like Waze, TomTom GO Navigation doesn’t yet work on CarPlay’s dashboard page, but since Google Maps now does, it’s likely only a matter of time before others follow suit.
Although the app is free, TomTom works on a subscription basis to keep the maps updated. This starts at $1.99 / £1.99 / AU$2.99 for a single month, or $12.99 / £12.99 / AU$19.49 for a year.
Audible
Audible
(Image credit: Audible, Inc.)
The go-to place for audiobooks, Amazon-owned Audible has a CarPlay app. Much like all of the other audio apps we’ve included here, Audible’s interface is incredibly simple. You are shown your library of books, then it’s just a case of tapping on one to carry on listening from where you left off.
Playback controls take up the whole screen, making it easy to tap without being distracted from the road. It’s also worth noting that all audio playback controls on CarPlay apps look the same, in a further bid to simplify the whole experience.
iHeart: Radio, Music, Podcasts
iHeart: Radio, Music, Podcasts
(Image credit: iHeartMedia Management Services, Inc.)
An all-in-one audio app, iHeart is a subscription service that includes a huge music library, plus thousands of live local and national radio stations, and access to all popular podcasts.
Simplicity is again the name of the game when it comes to the CarPlay experience. The app includes pages for Recents, Radio, Playlists, and Podcasts. Radio stations are filtered by genre to make your favorites easy to find, and there’s a recently played section to get back to your most recent podcasts with a tap.
A US-centric media service, iHeart is free with adverts, or available as an ad-free subscription from $5.99 / AU$8.49 per month (with no UK app at the time of writing).
Apple Podcasts
Apple Podcasts
(Image credit: Apple)
We’ve stuck mostly to third-party apps for this article but wanted to include Apple Podcasts as an exception. For millions of iPhone users it will likely be their go-to podcast app, so thankfully Apple has made it work well with CarPlay.
As with all other media apps, the CarPlay interface has menu icons along the top, simple lists of content, and a full-screen media control page with large play/pause and skip forward/back controls. There’s also a browse section to help you discover new podcasts while on the road.
Pocket Casts
Pocket Casts
(Image credit: Podcast Media LLC)
Widely regarded as one of the best podcast apps out there, Pocket Casts is an all-singing, all-dancing podcast app for iPhone. It has advanced playback controls, automatic downloading of new episodes, an iPad interface, and compatibility with AirPlay, Chromecast, and Sonos.
But, as with all apps mentioned here, things are massively simplified when CarPlay gets involved. This is no bad thing, of course, but means the menus and interface look almost exactly the same as every other media app. That’s the thing with CarPlay; Apple only grants developers access to a handful of very simple interface designs to use, leaving it down to app content to help set them apart.
Pocket Casts is available for free, while its Plus subscription costs either $0.99 / £0.99 / AU$1.49 per month or $9.99 / $9.99 / AU$12.49 for a year.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines