CarPlay Broken iOS 26.3

[theapplehead]

Starting Monday, February 23, CarPlay has completely stopped working for me on both of my cars. Unfortunately I cannot seem to get it working no matter what I try, whether it's restarting the device, removing the car from my phone's carplay settings, or removing my phone from my car's saved devices. All of it is to no avail. If anyone has any advice on how to resolve this, I'm all ears. This has never happened until updating to iOS 26 and has not been resolved as of today. I'm currently running an iPhone 15 Pro Max for reference. Thanks in advance if you can help me out!

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I was beating my head over this myself recently. Short answer: VPN. If you are using one, try turning it off. Long answer? In my case, the combo of the VPN I was using and a recent switch to Mint Mobile. It's possible iOS 26 played into this also. Anyway, I did not have any issue using a different VPN service on their free tier (Proton) but I am choosing to forgo using a VPN when connected to CarPlay going forward.

 

[theapplehead]

I was beating my head over this myself recently. Short answer: VPN. If you are using one, try turning it off. Long answer? In my case, the combo of the VPN I was using and a recent switch to Mint Mobile. It's possible iOS 26 played into this also. Anyway, I did not have any issue using a different VPN service on their free tier (Proton) but I am choosing to forgo using a VPN when connected to CarPlay going forward.

Oh my gosh. That's it - I turned off my VPN and lo and behold it's now working again. That's so strange. I can't recall this ever happening on previous versions of iOS but hopefully Apple will look into this and get it fixed. Thanks for the help though!

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Certainly VPN is a very likely cause.

If removing (not disabling - REMOVING) the VPN doesn't clear it up, try:
1. Forget the car from the phone, and the phone from the car
2. RENAME the phone (even one letter difference is fine)
3. Reconnect the phone to the car

Edit: You posted that disabling VPN fixed it as I was typing. Leaving this here for any future people looking for a solution though.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Oh my gosh. That's it - I turned off my VPN and lo and behold it's now working again. That's so strange. I can't recall this ever happening on previous versions of iOS but hopefully Apple will look into this and get it fixed. Thanks for the help though!

Yer welcome. This one was a thorny discovery since in my case, it was intermittent. I'd had very occasional issues when on AT&T but in those cases, I'd get my CarPlay UI but no data stream. This round when on Mint was more frequent and I couldn't even get the UI up. I was certain I had ruled out the VPN in my initial troubleshooting, but must have dismissed it too quickly.

Right now, what I've done is make an Automation in Shortcuts that is supposed to disconnect the VPN when CarPlay connects, then reconnects the VPN when CarPlay disconnects. That didn't work like it was supposed to last night after first setting it up, but hopefully I can figure out what the hiccup was today.

 

[theapplehead]

Here's an additional update for everyone. So it wasn't the VPN directly causing the issue. It was more layered than that. Apparently the "Kill-Switch" within the VPN blocks all local connections as well as internet connections to your iPhone thereby disabling CarPlay when enabled. Once I disabled the "Kill-Switch" I could use Proton again without issue. Good luck!

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Here's an additional update for everyone. So it wasn't the VPN directly causing the issue. It was more layered than that. Apparently the "Kill-Switch" within the VPN blocks all local connections as well as internet connections to your iPhone thereby disabling CarPlay when enabled. Once I disabled the "Kill-Switch" I could use Proton again without issue. Good luck!

Oh wow, that’s on for me in PIA also. I don’t even recall turning it. I was certain I had it off actually. Odd! I wonder if an app update enabled it. I’m not sure if that was the problem here for me since it was intermittent and I don’t have wireless CP. At any rate, good to know for future reference. 👍