“CarPlay for iOS 26 was a standout” of Apple’s WWDC 2025, “largely because of its new use of widgets,” Mark Gurman writes for Bloomberg News.

CarPlay — the smarter, safer way to use iPhone while driving — is used over 600 million times per day, and now with iOS 26, it receives updates that make it even more beautiful and easy to use. The stunning design includes a new compact view for incoming calls, allowing users to see who’s calling without missing key information like upcoming directions. iOS 26 also brings Tapbacks and pinned conversations to Messages in CarPlay, and with widgets and Live Activities, users can stay in the loop without losing focus on the road. These updates also come to CarPlay Ultra, which brings the best of iPhone and the best of the car together for a deeply integrated, unified experience across every screen.

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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The new CarPlay also includes several other bells and whistles that make the Apple experience quite a bit better while driving:

• When a call comes in, the notification doesn’t take over the entire screen. Instead, it’s now a banner like on iOS. This means if you’re following directions in the Maps app, you’ll no longer lose that view just to screen a call.

• Texting has been improved, allowing users to respond to messages with the car’s touch screen using Tapbacks (the thumbs-up, thumbs-down, heart and other symbols you can affix to a text). That makes the experience more like other Apple devices. Messages in CarPlay also has pinned chats.

• When you’re in park, you’ll be able to AirPlay video from your phone to the car’s touch screen.

• There’s also support for Live Activities (the Lock Screen widgets that show how far away your food delivery or flight is) synced from an iPhone. That’s handy if you’re driving to pick someone up from the airport.

Before the new CarPlay ships to consumers in the fall, I’d like to see Apple add support for Shortcuts widgets. There are plenty of people who use the iPhone Shortcuts to handle tasks such as opening or closing a garage door. That would be handy (and safer) to operate via CarPlay rather than their phone.

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MacDailyNews Take: User-customizable Shortcuts widgets would be an excellent, and relatively easy, addition with Widgets now part of CarPlay:

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