GoKawiilApple CarPlay wasn't center stage at the WWDC 2026 keynote on Monday, which leaned heavily on the new Siri AI, Apple Intelligence expansions and upgraded parental controls.
But buried in a dense list of changes and the developer-facing sessions, iOS 27 delivers a meaningful set of CarPlay updates. None of them is earth-shattering on its own, but collectively they're a genuine quality-of-life improvement for daily drivers.
I scrubbed through the patch notes and poked around the developer beta to see what's new and coming soon.
Better audio controls
The Now Playing interface is at last getting audio scrubbing. Touch and drag the progress bar to skip the boring part of a podcast, find the next chapter of an audiobook or get to the beat-drop faster. It's the kind of thing you'd assume was already there. Previously, you'd have to tap and hold the skip-forward or skip-backward button to achieve a similar result, which I always found unintuitive.
More useful still is the new Audio MiniPlayer: a pill-shaped floating control in the upper right corner (in left-hand-drive vehicles) that keeps play/pause and skip controls accessible even when you're running the map fullscreen. It's a small change, but anything that reduces the need to tap around while driving is a win in my book.
The new MiniPlayer (upper right) keeps play/pause and skip controls available wherever you are. Apple/Screenshot by CNET
Android Auto also recently introduced floating audio controls to its navigation display, though the widget Google presents is much larger.
CarPlay can collaborate with your car
CarPlay and CarPlay Ultra navigation apps running on iOS 27 will soon be able to share route data with and receive data and waypoints from the host vehicle's onboard software. This unlocks some interesting possibilities for driver assistance and autonomy down the road, but could also improve EV route planning more immediately.
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