For those unfamiliar with Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), it’s the annual event where the tech giant’s most senior engineers take center stage and share new products — often both hardware- and software-related. Last year, Apple wowed with news of an all-new version of Apple CarPlay that would take complete control of a car’s infotainment display and instrument panel (pictured above). This year’s keynote, however, made little in the way of updates to CarPlay.
Apple did announce iOS 17, which makes just one small change to CarPlay. Apple Music subscribers will now be able to create Collaborative Playlists, and passengers will be able to add to the queue and control what’s playing from their own devices using the SharePlay function. The new feature is very similar to a feature found on Spotify, where users can share a code and collaborate on a playlist together.
The new operating system also features offline maps for Apple’s Maps app, which allows users to download a portion of a map and still get turn-by-turn directions. While we assume this feature will work with CarPlay, Apple didn’t say for sure. We have reached out to an Apple spokesperson for confirmation and will update this piece as we receive new information.