I drove 25,000 miles with CarPlay - apps I used most

I spend a lot of time behind the wheel—more than 25,000 miles over the past year—so I rely on CarPlay to make iPhone apps easier to use while driving. My priority is keeping attention on the road, so anything beyond a quick tap or a Siri command I do only after pulling over somewhere safe.

Occasionally CarPlay refuses to cooperate and I have to fall back to an older handset and Android Auto. Only a small number of the apps on my iPhone have CarPlay variants, and even fewer are genuinely useful on the road. You can remove clutter by going to Settings > CarPlay on your iPhone, selecting your vehicle and tapping Customize.

Remember that the CarPlay interface is stripped down, leans heavily on Siri, limits some apps to audio-only, and can suffer connectivity hiccups when traveling at speed. For navigation I use Waze most of the time, with Google Maps as a backup. If you need offline or off-road capability, OsmAnd Maps offers powerful features for cyclists and hikers as well as drivers, though CarPlay access requires a paid subscription.

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