Apple Carplay is infuriating

wintech

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I love just about everything about this truck but Apple Carplay with sync 3 is maddening. I have been using carplay since 2016 on our Honda vehicles and it has always worked pretty good. However with this Ranger it is almost useless. I have all my music in Amazon music and everything I listen to is downloaded to my phone. The main problem is that it does not show all the music I have on my phone. For example, if I go to artist and select say Megadeth it says there are six albums. But when I select that artist, most of the time only one album is listed. Same if I go to just a list of all the albums, only the one is shown. Sometimes they all show up, but randomly they disappear from the display in sync. This happens with all artists with more than a couple albums. I can always see them and play them directly from the app on the phone but that kind of defeats the purpose. Also, randomly the screen freaks out when trying to scroll through music. Sometimes it won't scroll, other times it just randomly changes the layout. Sometimes the music will stop playing and I will see something that says something like 'streaming detected'. No idea what that is about because all my music is downloaded. The last thing that happens is that when using carplay several times my phone has gotten so hot it shuts down. It is scorching to the touch. I googled that and it was suggested to turn off bluetooth, and I did which seems to have fixed that. However, that was never necessary in my Civic I had before this nor does it happen in our other vehicle, a 2019 CR-V. I don't always use carplay so when I don't and bluetooth is off and I forget to turn it back on, I don't get my hands free features. I should mention that these problems exist both with my personal phone (iPhone 11) and my work phone (iPhone 7) so it doesn't appear to be a specific phone issue. Has anyone experienced any of this and if so is there a solution? I have done a soft reboot but have not done a factory reset. I don't really want to try that if it won't solve the problem so I wanted to check here first. I have read the thread about updating to 3.4 with the cyan labs software but am hesitant. I am tech savvy as I repair computers and electronics for a living but the thought of screwing up sync in my truck makes me nervous.
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Might be a bug that was repaired with Sync 3.4?

BTW, Rust in Peace is the best Megadeth album.
 
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wintech

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Might be a bug that was repaired with Sync 3.4?

BTW, Rust in Peace is the best Megadeth album.

I sure hope it is fixed in the update but I am still hesitant to do the update before it is officially released. As for Rust in Peace, it is a classic. I saw them on tour for that album at Clash of the Titans with Slayer and Anthrax in 1991.
 

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I love just about everything about this truck but Apple Carplay with sync 3 is maddening. I have been using carplay since 2016 on our Honda vehicles and it has always worked pretty good. However with this Ranger it is almost useless. I have all my music in Amazon music and everything I listen to is downloaded to my phone. The main problem is that it does not show all the music I have on my phone. For example, if I go to artist and select say Megadeth it says there are six albums. But when I select that artist, most of the time only one album is listed. Same if I go to just a list of all the albums, only the one is shown. Sometimes they all show up, but randomly they disappear from the display in sync. This happens with all artists with more than a couple albums. I can always see them and play them directly from the app on the phone but that kind of defeats the purpose. Also, randomly the screen freaks out when trying to scroll through music. Sometimes it won't scroll, other times it just randomly changes the layout. Sometimes the music will stop playing and I will see something that says something like 'streaming detected'. No idea what that is about because all my music is downloaded. The last thing that happens is that when using carplay several times my phone has gotten so hot it shuts down. It is scorching to the touch. I googled that and it was suggested to turn off bluetooth, and I did which seems to have fixed that. However, that was never necessary in my Civic I had before this nor does it happen in our other vehicle, a 2019 CR-V. I don't always use carplay so when I don't and bluetooth is off and I forget to turn it back on, I don't get my hands free features. I should mention that these problems exist both with my personal phone (iPhone 11) and my work phone (iPhone 7) so it doesn't appear to be a specific phone issue. Has anyone experienced any of this and if so is there a solution? I have done a soft reboot but have not done a factory reset. I don't really want to try that if it won't solve the problem so I wanted to check here first. I have read the thread about updating to 3.4 with the cyan labs software but am hesitant. I am tech savvy as I repair computers and electronics for a living but the thought of screwing up sync in my truck makes me nervous.
Same experience here. I have almost no control over song choice or artist choice. Some albums are missing from selection all together. I am waiting for Sync 3.4 but with very little expectations.
 

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It ain't perfect but it's much better than my wife's 2019 BMW Z4. It's wireless appleplay and a nightmare.
 


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Same experience here. I have almost no control over song choice or artist choice. Some albums are missing from selection all together. I am waiting for Sync 3.4 but with very little expectations.
Makes be glad I have Android. I have most of my library on USB chip and phone. Only issue I have with SYNC is Gracenotes doesn't recognize a couple of artists. Maybe because they are ripped from vinyl and I had to manually enter the tags. If I plug in to use AA I use Poweramp or Musicolet I have no issues at all, both pull all the info from the tags and the embedded album art.
 

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I won't address the Ranger issue with CarPlay. Other than to say... The Ranger doesn't allow reading from a thumb drive (see below), but if you have the latest iOS, the remaining features in CarPlay work correctly.

The last vehicle I owned was an 2017 Honda Civic, EX-T, with the lane keeping option. CarPlay did not work correctly. The issue you're complaining about, is rampant on the Honda as well. And that is not all!

The programming in the Honda, is based on Apache software. Read that as Micro-Soft. If you loaded your songs on a thumb drive, the display listed the songs, along with the (should be invisible) -ds files as well! If you're into listening to audio books, this bug is the pits! Fast forward to 2020, and Honda still hasn't "fixed" the issue.
 

Augie81

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I won't address the Ranger issue with CarPlay. Other than to say... The Ranger doesn't allow reading from a thumb drive (see below), but if you have the latest iOS, the remaining features in CarPlay work correctly.

The last vehicle I owned was an 2017 Honda Civic, EX-T, with the lane keeping option. CarPlay did not work correctly. The issue you're complaining about, is rampant on the Honda as well. And that is not all!

The programming in the Honda, is based on Apache software. Read that as Micro-Soft. If you loaded your songs on a thumb drive, the display listed the songs, along with the (should be invisible) -ds files as well! If you're into listening to audio books, this bug is the pits! Fast forward to 2020, and Honda still hasn't "fixed" the issue.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean as for a thumb drive not working. I play music in my Ranger almost exclusively from a thumb drive. That way I don't have to plug in my iPhone every time. I just copy songs from iTunes to my thumb drive and it works fine. It even displays the album cover art in the display. I was disappointed when I found my very old iPod didn't work in the Ranger and the thumb drive has been a good solution for me.
 

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Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean as for a thumb drive not working. I play music in my Ranger almost exclusively from a thumb drive. That way I don't have to plug in my iPhone every time. I just copy songs from iTunes to my thumb drive and it works fine. It even displays the album cover art in the display. I was disappointed when I found my very old iPod didn't work in the Ranger and the thumb drive has been a good solution for me.
The thumb/USB drive works for me, as does my older iPod mini. The only issue I have with either of them is that if I put too many songs on there (don't know what that number is), Sync is ALWAYS reindexing.
 

Augie81

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The thumb/USB drive works for me, as does my older iPod mini. The only issue I have with either of them is that if I put too many songs on there (don't know what that number is), Sync is ALWAYS reindexing.
I could not get my old iPod nano to work. It works fine and worked in my old 2011 car. Maybe I just didn't fiddle with it enough. No big deal though because I found the thumb drive works fine and I actually prefer it because there is no cable to mess with or get in the way. Just plug it in the USB and good to go. Now my iPod has been retired to lawn mowing duty only and no need to take it in and out of the car each time I mow the lawn. :)
 
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wintech

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I won't address the Ranger issue with CarPlay. Other than to say... The Ranger doesn't allow reading from a thumb drive (see below), but if you have the latest iOS, the remaining features in CarPlay work correctly.

The last vehicle I owned was an 2017 Honda Civic, EX-T, with the lane keeping option. CarPlay did not work correctly. The issue you're complaining about, is rampant on the Honda as well. And that is not all!

The programming in the Honda, is based on Apache software. Read that as Micro-Soft. If you loaded your songs on a thumb drive, the display listed the songs, along with the (should be invisible) -ds files as well! If you're into listening to audio books, this bug is the pits! Fast forward to 2020, and Honda still hasn't "fixed" the issue.

My previous vehicle was a 2018 Civic EX-T. Carplay worked mostly without issues and none of the issues I am having with the Ranger ever happened with the Civic. The CR-V also works fine as it's infotainment is basically the same as the Civic. My wife primarily drives the CR-V and she always uses carplay so I know if it was doing the same thing, I would hear about it along with a demand to immediately fix it. Just today I was using it in the Ranger and when I went to the artist, all of the albums were listed. However just as I went to select a song, it disappeared from the list, leaving just the songs from the one album that shows when this problem presents itself. Even if I start the song from the phone, I can go forward and back in the song list on that album with the hard buttons on the dash or the steering wheel, but I cannot view the songs on the carplay screen, except for the one that is 'now playing'. I am going to try a factory default reset this weekend and see if it makes a difference. If that doesn't work maybe it will work better with iOS 14 and/or the sync 3.4 update when it officially comes out. As far as using a thumb drive, that would be nice but like I said I use Amazon music so the music has to play through the app.
 

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The thumb/USB drive works for me, as does my older iPod mini. The only issue I have with either of them is that if I put too many songs on there (don't know what that number is), Sync is ALWAYS reindexing.
Update to my previous post. I installed the recently released, and buggy Sync 3.4 update the other day. In addition to the several issues it has, I believe it's caused an issue with audio. In addition to using USB for music, I also use it for audiobooks. Since the update, I've noticed that when restarting my Ranger, it frequently does not automatically detect the USB, or at very least is very slow to recognize it. So audio automatically switches to AM radio instead. So I have to go to 'Source' and select my USB. Luckily it at least remembers where I was in the book. This has not been an issue with Sync 3.3.
 
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wintech

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Well I did the official update to 3.4 and now carplay is worse if that is possible. I also lost the climate controls which pisses me off because I like to have the vents set on upper and lower which I can't do now. As for carplay, not only is the original problem still there (not showing all the songs, scrolling wigging out, sometimes can't control the volume- it shows 'prompt volume', and it will just stop playing while displaying 'streaming detected'), now more than 50% of the time the USB ports don't work at all. They won't even charge the phone, much less detect the phone for carplay. When they do work, it takes five minutes or more for the phone to show it is charging and sync to show that carplay is available. I don't really know what to do from here. I guess I can take it to ford but right now I am dealing with a $10,000 home insurance claim from a water leak in my kitchen. Add to that school is starting and we still have no real idea how it is going to work (no in person school right now) and I am just about at my wits end.
 

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Try resetting the APIM. Hold down the power button and the next track forward button until the screen goes black and resets.
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