Apple’s iOS 18.4 rolled to the public earlier this month, adding new features such as new languages for Siri, a new recipe section on Apple News and an environment music option.
Update also brings three new enrichments to Apple Carplay to streamlin your driving experience. While there is not a huge overhaul, it includes some easy UI Twixes and new options that provide more information at a glance, which means that less time on the screen and more time to focus on the road.
Read for some of the largest carplay updates added with iOS 18.4
Additional icon
Viewed by 9to5macThe iOS 18.4 pair an additional row of icons for some types of cars. Depending on the size of the infotainment display of your car, the carplay now shows a third line of the APP icon where it was supported only by two.
This is especially easy for vehicles with large displays, making you access to even more apps on the same screen. It is good to see that Apple should not allow that to waste extra real estate, or worse, to fly the app icon in huge, clunk drops.
Screen and driving simply do not go together, especially when you are troubled with flipping through the menu. This setup makes it easy to see what you need at a glance, so you are less likely to remove your eyes from the road.
It seems limited to some cars for now (my colleague Tom Puicard’s 8-inch Infotainment display had two rows of carplay icons as usual), but Apple could roll out support for more models in the future.
Sports apps
The iOS 18.4 also makes it easier to stay on top of the larger game than the road. Carplay now facilitates integration with apps that show sports scores, seeing how your favorite team is doing at a glance.
Carplay is limited to check the score for now, but it can change soon. As 9to5mac Last month reported, Apple released an API for sports app developers, so the third-party sports app or integration can be on the horizon with the Apple Sports App.
New default options for European Union users
Finally, the iOS 18.4 made it easier for users to tailor their carplay experience for the navigation app of choice in the pond.
Instead of living with Apple Maps, the European Union users can now set options such as Google Maps as their default.
It is a small but adequate upgrade, which means you can simply say, “Hey Siri, take me to X,” and will use the carplay automatically whatever navigation app you would like to reach there.
