How to see iPhone Live Activities on car’s screen in iOS 26
Learn how to get active Live Activities from your iPhone apps on your car’s display when using wired or wireless CarPlay in iOS 26.
With the iOS 26 update, Live Activities from your iPhone apps now also appear on your car’s Dashboard when using CarPlay, allowing you to keep track of your food order, flight, and other such things without having to take your hands off the steering wheel.
Imagine you’re driving to the airport and have Live Activity from Flighty or your airline app active on your iPhone. Now, before iOS 26, you’d have to reach for your iPhone to see the updates. But now, you can see the Live Activity and any changes to it right on your car’s display.
Similarly, live updates related to your food delivery status, sports score, quick commerce orders, and more can now appear on your car’s screen, ensuring you don’t have to pick up your iPhone and take your eyes off the road for an extended duration; simply glancing at your vehicle’s screen gives you the information.
How to set up Live Activities in CarPlay
Aside from updating your iPhone to iOS 26, there is practically no setup involved, as Live Activities for CarPlay is enabled out of the box in iOS 26. When you’re using wired or wireless CarPlay and an iOS app starts showing a Live Activity, that Live Activity will also show up on your car’s display. It’s that simple.
Where to see Live Activities in CarPlay
When Live Activity from an iPhone app first starts and (I suppose) gets an update, you’ll see it as a non-obtrusive alert at the bottom of your CarPlay screen, as shown in the screenshot below.
After a while, the Live Activity alert disappears from your CarPlay Home Screen, and you can then see it by swiping right on the first Home Screen page. This screen shows Maps, Music, and any active Live Activity, as evident from this screenshot of my car’s Dashboard.
If you want to test Live Activities in CarPlay now
You can do this with most of your apps that support Live Activities. But to test things out, download the Shelf – Create Live Activities app and follow the process we outlined in our guide on using Live Activities on Mac in macOS Tahoe. When you start a Live Activity from this app on your iPhone, it will appear on your car’s screen.
Which kinds of Live Activities don’t appear on the car’s screen
In my tests across multiple apps, I found that Live Activities from nearly all of them appear on the CarPlay screen. However, ongoing stopwatch activity from the Apple Clock app and other such alerts, such as an active file download in Safari or WhatsApp uploading a video in the background, will not appear on your car’s screen. To be fair, these are not Live Activities per se (you can identify them by their smaller width compared to regular Live Activities).
Stop seeing Live Activities on your car’s screen
Live Activities is enabled by default for CarPlay after you update your iPhone to iOS 26. But if you don’t want to see Live Activities from your iPhone apps on your car’s screen, follow these steps to turn the feature off:
- Start wireless or wired CarPlay.
- Open the Settings app on your car’s screen (not the Settings app on your iOS device).
- Turn off the Live Activities switch.
Moving forward, any Live Activity from your iOS 26 apps will show up on the iPhone screen but not on your car’s display. And in case you don’t want to see Live Activities from an app even on your iPhone, go to iOS Settings > Apps > select the app > Live Activities and turn off the Allow Live Activities switch.
If Live Activities don’t show on your car’s display
- Go through these tips to fix Live Activities not working or updating on your iPhone.
- Restart your iPhone and your car.
- Make sure your device is running the latest version of iOS 26.
- Try with another app, and if it’s Live Activity appears in CarPlay, update the app for which it doesn’t.
What do you think of this new update?
Also new in iOS 26: How to use iPhone app widgets in CarPlay
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/12/02/live-activities-in-carplay/
Leave a Reply