iOS 27 quietly fixes a bunch of long standing CarPlay annoyances

[DarkMatter10]

iOS 27 landed this week and while Apple's own keynote spent most of its time on Siri AI and the broader Liquid Glass redesign, CarPlay quietly picked up a genuinely useful batch of fixes that iPhone owners have been asking for across several years of feedback. The biggest one is finally being able to drag or tap directly on the Now Playing progress bar to skip forward or back in a song or podcast, something that has worked in every native iPhone app for years but somehow never made it into CarPlay until now.

Beyond the scrubbing fix, Apple added a proper mini player that shows artwork and playback controls in the top right corner of the screen, replacing the old plain waveform icon that used to sit there. Widgets get a genuine overhaul too, since you can now add any widget that would normally appear on your iPhone's home screen rather than being limited to the small handful Apple previously whitelisted specifically for CarPlay, complete with a Smart Rotate option that swaps which widget shows based on time of day.

The more forward looking change is a new video in car feature, letting supported vehicles browse and play video content directly from the infotainment screen rather than needing to start playback on the iPhone first and then send it over via AirPlay as an external display. Playback only works while the car is parked for obvious safety reasons, switching automatically to audio only the moment the car shifts into drive, and the feature depends on automakers actually choosing to support it, so it will not show up in every car immediately even after updating.

Apple also refreshed CarPlay's visual language with new wallpapers and Liquid Glass styled app icons to bring it in line with the rest of iOS 27, alongside smaller quality of life improvements like better wireless connection reliability and improved GPS accuracy for navigation heading detection. None of it is headline grabbing on its own, but taken together it is a genuinely solid refresh for something Apple usually treats as an afterthought during its big September keynote

Apple CarPlay quietly just got a free upgrade with some long-awaited additionswww.pocket-lint.com