Are you looking for a way to make your cross-county road trips more fun? If yes, you’re in luck. With CarPlay in iOS 17, any passenger in your car can use SharePlay to control the music with ease. If this feature piques your interest, here’s a guide explaining how you can use SharePlay with CarPlay in iOS 17.
- What is SharePlay with CarPlay in iOS 17?
- How to start a SharePlay session in CarPlay
- How to join an existing SharePlay session on CarPlay
SharePlay lets you stream music and videos with your friends and family remotely. To make this feature even more useful, Apple has integrated it with CarPlay in iOS 17. Now, anyone in your car can control the music and contribute to what’s playing while you’re focused on driving safely.
Earlier, if you ever wanted to allow a passenger to play music in your car, you had to either rely on an AUX cable paired with a Lightning to 3.5mm Headphone Jack adapter or connect audio over Bluetooth. While both methods did the trick, they were highly impractical by today’s standards.
Now, SharePlay makes this process a breeze. Whenever you connect your iPhone with CarPlay, it automatically initiates a SharePlay session, allowing nearby Apple devices to join and play music together. What’s great about this is that it even works when passengers aren’t subscribed to Apple Music.
There are two convenient ways to start a SharePlay session in CarPlay. But before you can do that, you must ensure that you and all other passengers have iOS 17 installed and you’re subscribed to Apple Music.
- Connect your iPhone to CarPlay either wirelessly or via a USB cable.
- Open the Music app on your car’s display running CarPlay.
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‍ - Tap the triangle icon on the top-right to open the Now Playing page.
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‍ - Tap the SharePlay icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
If you don’t see a QR code, you must tap the QR code icon.
‍ - Open the camera app on the passenger’s device → Scan the QR code.
‍ - Tap the yellow ‘Music’ button that appears above the camera shutter.
- Tap Connect once the Music app opens up on the passenger’s device.
‍ - Tap the prompt on your car’s display.
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‍ - Select the Green checkmark icon to start the SharePlay session.
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If you’re traveling with someone whose contact is saved on your iPhone, you can initiate a SharePlay session directly without scanning the QR code.
- Open the Music app in CarPlay → go to the Now Playing page.
- Tap the SharePlay icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
‍ - Toggle on Discoverable by Nearby Contacts if it’s not already enabled.
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‍ - Tap the Tap to join SharePlay prompt on a passenger’s iPhone or iPad.
- Tap Connect once the Music app opens up on the passenger’s device.
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‍ - Tap the prompt on your car’s display.
‍ - Select the Green checkmark icon to start the SharePlay session.
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Once you start a SharePlay session in CarPlay, the connected passengers can change the song that’s playing, add tracks to the queue, play or pause the music, turn on shuffle or repeat, and view song lyrics on their iPhones.
Adding all passengers in your car to the SharePlay session may seem like a daunting task. But don’t worry! Once you approve one passenger on your car, they can add other passengers to that existing SharePlay session. So you don’t need to add them via CarPlay manually. Here’s how it works:
- Open the Music app on a connected device → Go to Now Playing.
- Tap the SharePlay icon found below the volume slider.
- Scan the QR code using the device that wants to join the session.
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FAQs
Yes, both the host and the passenger’s device must be connected to the internet via cellular or Personal Hotspot to initiate the SharePlay session and access the Apple Music.
SharePlay in CarPlay is primarily designed to work with Apple Music. While it’s possible for third-party music apps like Spotify to work with SharePlay, they don’t support SharePlay in CarPlay at the time of writing this post.
It’s effortless to end a SharePlay session in CarPlay. All you need to do is navigate to the Now Playing Page in the Apple Music App on CarPlay or a connected iPhone → Tap the SharePlay icon → Then tap the End button.
If you don’t want passengers to join the SharePlay session and take control of the music, you can turn it off. Go to the Now Playing page on CarPlay → Tap the SharePlay icon → Toggle off Discoverable by Nearby Contacts. Thus, they will not receive any prompts or notifications to use SharePlay.
Wrapping up…
SharePlay with CarPlay is a great new feature in iOS 17 that makes it easier for you to listen to music with your friends and family while you’re traveling together. I hope this how-to guide helped you to set up a SharePlay session in CarPlay. If you have any doubts, leave them in the comments section.
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