Update, October 1, 2020: Partly because of covid, and partly because of this problem, I got rid of the Aygo, when I traded it, and our Yaris, to Toyota to get a new Yaris. I think I figure out what the problem was. The new Yaris has a different media system, and my guess is that the system in the Aygo didn’t have enough memory to handle large amounts of data. In my case, I’m pretty sure it was my music library that caused the crash. So if you’re still having problems, try turning off iCloud Music Library to see if that helps.
Update, January 6, 2020: More than three months later, and there’s still no resolution to this case. Apple has abdicated all responsibility and seems to not want to resolve this issue.
Update, November 4, 2019:Today, I spoke to a senior AppleCare advisor. He wanted me to set the phone up as new to see what happened. I did this, and sat in the car for a few minutes, and there were no crashes.
I hadn’t signed into anything when I set the phone up, so I signed into Apple Music so I could listen to music while waiting, and there were still no crashes.
I then signed into iCloud with my Apple ID, and CarPlay promptly crashed. I signed out, restarted, and everything worked fine again. I signed into iCloud, and it crashed. I signed out, and it worked fine.
I then signed in with a different Apple ID, one I don’t use much, and CarPlay worked fine. I signed out, signed in again with my normal Apple ID, and it crashed again.
So there’s something in my iCloud data – contacts, calendars, phone call info, or messages – that is corrupt and causing CarPlay to crash. I don’t know how they are going to figure this out, but the person sent this on to Apple engineers to see what they can do. I imagine that if it is possible to export all my iCloud data, then reimport it, it might solve the problem, which seems to be some corrupted data that CarPlay reads.
Of all the things that I could think of causing these crashes, this would never have crossed my mind. Lots of people are reporting issues with CarPlay and iOS 13, and I wonder if this is the cause of many, if not of most of them.
Original article:
I have a magenta fizz 2018 Toyota Aygo, which was the first Toyota that offered CarPlay, and that feature is one of the reasons I bought this model.
Under iOS 12, I never had a problem with CarPlay, but since iOS 13, it has consistently crashed. It started when I updated my iPhone XS Max to the golden master of iOS 13 (that’s the final release version of the software, available to people with developer accounts about a week before the official release). Since then, there have been three other updates to iOS §3 (and my phone is no longer running betas), so you’d think that Apple has had plenty of time to squash bugs.
When I start the car, the car’s head unit displays its welcome screen, then CarPlay displays, then, after about 20 or 30 seconds, it crashes. The screen goes black for 20 seconds, then the head unit comes back, and repeat.
Today, my partner and I went on a short trip, to a town about a half hour away. After several crashes, CarPlay worked for me, long enough to get us to our destination. But on the way back, it wouldn’t work for more than 30 seconds. But my partner’s iPhone SE works fine.
This has happened on two iPhones: my iPhone XS Max, and the new iPhone 11 I got last week. So it’s not specific to a given phone. The fact that it works with an iPhone SE is odd. I’ve tried “forgetting” the car in the CarPlay settings on the iPhone, several times, and I even changed the USB cable in case that could be a variable.
So I called Apple today, and they are escalating the case, but given my experience with Apple and complex problems, I have absolutely no faith that they will do anything at all. I’m taking the car to my Toyota dealer in Thursday, but they’re scratching their heads; all they can do is bounce it up in the Toyota chain to see what happens. It could be something as simple as a firmware update for the car; I got it last December, so it’s possible that there is an update available.
I hope they find a solution to this, because, as my car dealer knows well, this is one of the main reasons I upgraded from a 2017 Aygo to a 2018 model (plus they were having a promotion, so made it worth my while to make the change). But if they can’t fix this soon, I’ll have to see what my options are regarding my lease. Since there is no GPS/satnav on the car, because it supports CarPlay, then I have no way of navigating (without falling back on my iPhone mounted with a suction cup on the windshield, which I really don’t want to do).
What about you, dear reader? I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that I’m not the only one seeing CarPlay crashes. Have you had similar issues with your car?