CarPlay occasionally doesn't connect. How do you get it to connect?

[Darauk]

Wireless CarPlay uses WiFi (specifically, WiFi Projection), not Bluetooth.

Good to know, I will double check those settings tomorrow.

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[Ford Motor Company]

I’ve been having CarPlay issues since December 31. I deleted the VPN from my phone, spent three hours on the phone with three different technicians, pairing and unpairing, starting and restarting everything from the iphone 14 to the SYNC system. They’re suggesting now that it could be a hardware issue but I have not read one thing on any of these forums, suggesting that it’s a hardware issue. Everything’s updated. CarPlay does not work and the dealership wants me to bring it in but they’re not promising. they’re know how to work on it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hi there! Will you send us a message with your VIN and your local Ford dealer? I can look into things on my end.

 

[Ford Motor Company]

This has been happening to me the past few days, also.

Turning Bluetooth off and on in my phone has no effect. A full power off and restart of the phone also has no effect. Regardless of what I do on the phone, it will not connect over Bluetooth, only over USB.

I see "Bluetooth Disconnected" on the main screen of the FordPass app. I cannot open the doors, windows, frunk, or trunk from FordPass. I've killed the app and restarted it, which doesn't resolve the issue.

On my phone I see a Bluetooth device called ##### MACH E connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting again. At the same time, Mustang Mach-E (the name I gave my MME in the SYNC connection settings) usually remains disconnected. I tried to manually turn Bluetooth off on the car and the SYNC Bluetooth settings froze/stopped responding.

I suspect the Bluetooth stack is not responding in the car. The only thing I have not tried is the force reboot of SYNC itself. I'll give that a try tomorrow.

On a semi-related note, I have not found out why the Mach-E has two Bluetooth connections to my phone. I presume one is for FordPass operations and one is for CarPlay, but that's just a guess. Perhaps @Ford Motor Company could share an answer?

Good morning! I would like to see how I can assist on my end. Will you send us a message with your VIN and your local Ford dealer?

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

If your iPhones are not updated to iOS 16.2, try updating them. My CarPlay connection issues seem to have vanished once 16.2 was pushed to my phone.

 

[kennethjk]

If your iPhones are not updated to iOS 16.2, try updating them. My CarPlay connection issues seem to have vanished once 16.2 was pushed to my phone.

My car play had gotten much better also, until my wife came back from a trip with her friends.

as soon as she was a passenger in the car and had her cell phone with her, not PAAK activated, the car play connection was again a problem.

we Took 2 rides together yesterday and car play for me wouldn’t connect. Went to a football game with a friend and no issue.

is there a solution? Other than the obvious of never driving with my wife or telling her to turn off her phone or turning off Bluetooth which would not be a pleasant conversation

 

[roamtheworld]

If your iPhones are not updated to iOS 16.2, try updating them. My CarPlay connection issues seem to have vanished once 16.2 was pushed to my phone.

My car play had gotten much better also, until my wife came back from a trip with her friends.

as soon as she was a passenger in the car and had her cell phone with her, not PAAK activated, the car play connection was again a problem.

we Took 2 rides together yesterday and car play for me wouldn’t connect. Went to a football game with a friend and no issue.

is there a solution? Other than the obvious of never driving with my wife or telling her to turn off her phone or turning off Bluetooth which would not be a pleasant conversation

These issues are not going away anytime soon.
My wife and I both have profiles and use CarPlay all the time but with various success.
Plugging into USB gets us 99% success.
My wife gave up on PaaK so I'm the only one still trying to use it now.

Lately when my son gets in the car his iPhone is picked up first even with both phones present that have profiles. He has no profile just a previously connected phone. My daughters phone often gets picked up before the phone included in profiles.

Our iPhones are 11Pro, 12, 12Pro and 13Pro all running current iOS versions I even have Beta iOS (16.3) on one phone.

@Ford Motor Company can you provide a place to provide feedback and log these issues?

We been through all the resets, restarts and setups over the past few months of ownership and I'm just tired of trying to fight with wireless CarPlay and PaaK at this point.

 

[RaineN]

Hi there! Will you send us a message with your VIN and your local Ford dealer? I can look into things on my end.

How do I send you a private message?

 

[roamtheworld]

These issues are not going away anytime soon.
My wife and I both have profiles and use CarPlay all the time but with various success.
Plugging into USB gets us 99% success.
My wife gave up on PaaK so I'm the only one still trying to use it now.

Lately when my son gets in the car his iPhone is picked up first even with both phones present that have profiles. He has no profile just a previously connected phone. My daughters phone often gets picked up before the phone included in profiles.

Our iPhones are 11Pro, 12, 12Pro and 13Pro all running current iOS versions I even have Beta iOS (16.3) on one phone.

@Ford Motor Company can you provide a place to provide feedback and log these issues?

We been through all the resets, restarts and setups over the past few months of ownership and I'm just tired of trying to fight with wireless CarPlay and PaaK at this point.

Im replying to my own posting.

This AM 1/10/23 my iPhone connected wirelessly and worked perfect with CarPlay!
My son was in the car with his iPhone but no other phones present.
Yesterday the wireless CarPlay would NOT connect to my iPhone at all and I had to use USB.
Zero changes in car or iPhones between the two days.

This is the example that frustrates many people so much.

@Ford Motor Company This needs to be tracked for your engineering teams to get to a solution. I'm happy to help by providing details via a form if provided.

 

[voxel]

Intermittent CarPlay connections at startup is my only major gripe about the MME.

It's unpredictable. Wireless doesn't connect majority of the time and often wired doesn't either so I have to shutdown the car and restart it.

I had similar issues with the ID.4 but my MINI SE and BMW i4 have been flawless. I'm amazed at how the BMW i4 always connects to wireless CarPlay without fail (okay maybe one or two failures total in four months).

 

[Northofnine]

Intermittent CarPlay connections at startup is my only major gripe about the MME.

It's unpredictable. Wireless doesn't connect majority of the time and often wired doesn't either so I have to shutdown the car and restart it.

I had similar issues with the ID.4 but my MINI SE and BMW i4 have been flawless. I'm amazed at how the BMW i4 always connects to wireless CarPlay without fail (okay maybe one or two failures total in four months).

Hi all,
I use wired carplay all the time. Plug in the phone before you start the car. I have found if you turn off the car then disconnect the phone, it will give you a better chance of connecting next time. This works 90% of the time. Occasionally I have to reboot the main screen to get it back.
I don't use wireless as it adds a slight delay on phone calls.
Hope this helps.

 

[West1134]

I'll add some of my experience FWIW.

1) I exclusively use PAAK, and the MME is my daily driver. My wife has only driven it maybe four times since we bought it back in Oct 22. I'd say PAAK works 98% of the time for me. That is to say yes I occassionaly have to deal with pressing the door button a couple of times before it recognizes my phone and unlocks, and occasionally I will get the "key not detected" message on the screen yet the car still drives, etc. so hasn't been a true issue yet.

2) Wireless CarPlay also has worked I'd say 95% of the time for me. Usually it is instant to connect upon starting the car, occasionally it will delay connecting until I'm a few hundred yards down the road but then works fine. But sometimes it does what others have described, and I will also agree seems to have gotten worse in the last couple of days/weeks. Usually turning my phone on airplane mode (kills WiFi & bluetooth transmitters) for a few mins then back on solves the problem. I've also swiped up on the sync app to "close" (not clear if that really does the trick) the app on the sync screen for carplay. Again these have mostly worked.

3) There is absolutely something related to profiles, and using a mix of key fobs & PAAK. My wife exclusively uses the fob, and I exclusively use PAAK. When she has driven the car (without me mind you) and I go to get back into it the next day etc. I have nearly every time ran into issues with it loading the proper profile. I have the feature (can't remember what its called) off that shows the blue block in front of the car on the drivers screen so that is always my visual indicator that my profile didn't load properly. I simply press the 1 button on the door and boom I'm back in business. But there is definitely something wrong in the coding with how it handles profiles, and how to manage multiple "keys" present at the same time, along with which ones it connected to last.

4) Finally, we had our first instance the other day where I had to hard reboot the SYNC system (holding volume down + forward track button). My wife had taken the car and it worked flawlessly on here way into town using carplay etc. She went shopping for 30 ish mins and upon getting back into the car CarPlay wouldn't work anymore. She gave up after calling me to troubleshoot it, and once home I took a look. Not only did I find that CarPlay wasn't working, but it also wasn't changing/loading profiles at all anymore. You'd press the icon to load a different profile and it simply wouldn't respond, it just kept itself in guest profile. After various troubleshooting steps, I finally rebooted SYNC and that resolved all the issues including CarPlay for her phone.

 

[Burnsy8787]

Occasionally CarPlay fails to connect for me. When this happens in the Bluetooth settings my iPhone 12 pro says the Mustang MachE device is connected as well as 09346 MachE device. I don't understand why there are two separate connections, but they are both connected. Despite this when I go to the CarPlay connect option in the MachE menu it does not appear to be connected and if I tap the CarPlay icon to connect the phone it spins for a while and then fails. The odd thing is that if I disconnect the blue tooth connection from the phone the MachE screen suddenly displays a message telling me the phone just disconnected.

Things I have already tried to resolve the issue that haven't worked:

- Turn the car off, Open the door to shut it down. Wait a few minutes and start again
- Do a hard reset of the phone
- Disconnect both MachE bluetooth devices and reconnect.
- Tried plugging it in to the USB port under the monitor

The only way the issue ever resolves is when I get to my destination and exit the car and then not come back for 20-30 minutes or more. Next tie in the car it works fine. This happens about once a week so less than 10% of the time but still annoying if we're about to take along drive and the only solution is to get out of the car and come back 1/2 hr later.

Has anyone had a similar issue and found a good solution?

Others have said this is something that came up recently but I've always had issues, but mine has actually improved over time. Steps I usually take:

1. Turn iphone on airplain mode then back after a few seconds. probably 75% of the time, my carplay will pop up by itself after this.

2. Go into connections and select carplay on my phone. If this does not work, it means literally nothing will work other than turning my car off and on again.

3. Turn the car off, open the door, close door, turn car on.

I've only had none of these work 1 time and I had to delete my entire connection and all to get it to appear again. I think that was actually because my wife paired her phone and things got all out of whack with mine.

 

[Zman1750]

I just wanted to add that I’m having the same CarPlay issues with my 22 GT and an iPhone 14 Pro on 16.1/16.2. I’m still on software 3.5.3 as my car will NOT download and install the latest OTAs. I really wish I could plug in a USB stick and update my car’s software manually. It’s extremely frustrating. @Ford Motor Company

 

[Darauk]

How do I send you a private message?

Click the @Ford Motor Company profile and select "start conversation".

Cheers,

Darauk

 

[Ford Motor Company]

I just wanted to add that I’m having the same CarPlay issues with my 22 GT and an iPhone 14 Pro on 16.1/16.2. I’m still on software 3.5.3 as my car will NOT download and install the latest OTAs. I really wish I could plug in a USB stick and update my car’s software manually. It’s extremely frustrating. @Ford Motor Company

Hello! Send us a private message with your VIN and the name and location of your local Ford dealer. I’d be happy to see what I can do to assist with this concern. Thanks!

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