TECHNOLOGY

I Touched My CarPlay Screen and Found New Controls

I never knew this stuff was there

Screenshot by author

I was sitting parked after telling Siri where I wanted to go and for some reason I tapped on the CarPlay screen.

What magic is this? More controls popped into view, controls I had never seen before. What? Why didn’t I know about this?

Curious, I tapped the top icon, the one with the squiggly line. It showed me the whole route rather from where I was starting from. Great! But I was more interested in the sound controls. Thar little speaker button caught my attention because sometimes I want turn by turn directions, and sometimes I don’t. I had somehow recently accidentally turned those off and hadn’t figured out how to turn them back on.

Screenshot by author

Screenshot by author

Yes, that’s more like it: turn by turn directions, alerts only, and shut your trap because I am listening to a podcast!

By the way, getting a screenshot of CarPlay is easy: just take a screenshot on your phone. Two photos will be taken, one of whatever you were looking at on your phone and one of what’s on CarPlay.

But, but, but

That’s fine while I’m sitting here in the parking lot, but what if I want to change that while driving? Sure, I can tap the screen to bring that up and tap it again to change the settings, but it takes a noticeable amount of time for the tap to respond, and then the icons are small, so it takes that much longer to locate them for an accurate hit. I don’t like having my eyes off the road that long when driving.

Well, duh, I can use Siri, am I right? Duh!

Nuh-uh.

I tried “Turn by turn on” and “Turn by turn off”. Siri seemed perfectly happy with those and responded cheerily.

But nothing changed. I tried other words, but nothing worked. Aargh!

Ah, Shortcuts!