iOS 18 CarPlay sound connection issues

After updating to ios18, I'm having all sorts of CarPlay sound issues. Prior to the upgrade, everything worked fine. Using Toyota Rav4 2021. I've tried rebooting car console and phone with no luck, removing and adding phone bluetooth to car with no luck.

  1. Cabled airplay (data cable to phone) does not work at all, or requires rebooting phone and car console to get airplay, but sound only plays on iPhone, not on car stereo.
  2. Wireless CarPlay very inconsistent.
    1. Sometimes it connects but starts with "mono/voice" at fixed volume with inability to change volume with Spotify and Apple Music
    2. After an indeterminate time (minutes later) it sometimes changes to full stereo with volume control.
    3. Other times it only plays voice through the phone speaker, and when you tell the app where to send the music, CarPlay is selected.

I'm seeing multiple threads like this on the apple developer forums and on Reddit and in the wild, but not so much on these forums.


What can I do to resolve this? As a daily driver, this is a major setback. Very seriously contemplating reverting to iOS17 just to get this to work.

iPhone 15 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 23, 2024 6:19 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 26, 2024 12:02 PM

Try turning off Vocal Shortcuts. It seems this feature may be lowering audio fidelity as if the phone is always in a Siri-speaking mode.

5 replies

Nov 4, 2024 3:21 AM in response to Rjconl

You have no idea how much frustration… resetting, full scrapping of all my car settings profiles, and new usbs.


Nothing, comes close to the fact that this interruption by audio, loss of maps, and at one point a complete ear piercing sound that wouldn’t go away, and couldn’t be muted, WHILE I WAS DRIVING! Never experienced anything like this before. It locked my entire car system!!


Huge health hazard all because of a “new feature”


Turning off Vocal Shortcuts solved all of my issues. To think non of this was tested is inexcusable.


Apple needs to see this.


And you sir, are my new favorite person on the internet. Thank you so very much


iOS 18 CarPlay sound connection issues

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