Is there any way to stop audio apps in Apple CarPlay, especially Overcast, from automatically playing when I start the car?

[cragfast]

There seems to be no consistent behaviour in CarPlay or whether audio apps, especially Overcast (to be fair, I haven’t tried others) will automatically resume playing once I start the car.

I can understand that there is a very small convenience benefit to this “feature”, because you don’t have to remember to resume a podcast etc…

But this seems to be based on an apparently unshakeable assumption that we all want to resume listening to a podcast every time we get in the car.

And there are many occasions when that may be completely inappropriate.

For example, maybe I am listening to a true crime podcast (or any other “explicit” content) and then I pick my young kids up from school, and as I soon as I start the car, the gruesome details of the crime, or some adult humor is piped into their ears as soon as I start the car.

Or maybe I’m listening to a self-help podcast dealing with something such as anxiety or mental health problems, or coming to terms with a diagnosis that my passengers might not know about.

Or maybe, my passenger and i want to actually talk to each other? Apple has a better idea - let’s both listen to whatever podcast I was listening to before i picked them up, even if we don’t want to!

There seem to be very few scenarios where the “effort” of pressing the play button on the CarPlay interface is so taxing that it outweighs the downsides of automatically playing inappropriate and intrusive content.

This is source of constant frustration to me, as I cannot find any way to fix it. I’m therefore reaching out to the collective intelligence of MPU listeners in the hope that someone has a solution.

I bet David’s Rivian doesn’t do this!

Help me MPU, you’re my only hope!

[NiKoBeaR]

Please tag me if you find a solution for this! Pocketcasts does the same thing.

[carlsson]

This happens because your phone is connected via Bluetooth Media. As far as I can remember, all my cars with Bluetooth have behaved this way.

Solution: Don’t connect using Bluetooth Media on your phone. There are two separate Bluetooth connections available: one for phone calls and one for media. I’ve driven Mercedes and Volvo vehicles, and if I remember correctly, both work the same way in this regard (though not all car brands may operate identically).

Edit: And yes, this means that you have to reconnect it if you actually want to play anything from your phone. Very annoying.
It works better if you have CarPlay, at least with Volvo.

[Topre]

I create a Shortcut Automation that stops playing media when Driving.

Edit: I’ve since turn it off (thus Don’t Run) but you can turn it on and give it a spin.

[Christian]

My answer may not be the popular one, but I think that it is working exactly how it is supposed to work.

I am using CarPlay every day. I am taking my dog for a walk while listening to music or podcasts via the iPhone with my AirPods connected. When I am back home, I put the AirPods back into the case, which will result in automatically pausing the audio on the iPhone. When I enter my car (Volkswagen) driving to the office, the iPhone will connect to CarPlay and will resume the playback automatically after having it paused before. If I stop the audio on the iPhone manually before taking the AirPods out of my ears, the iPhone will not resume the playback automatically later when I enter the car. And I like it a lot exactly this way. Most of the time, it works like this: if the iPhone paused audio automatically, it will resume the audio playback automatically via CarPlay. If the iPhone’s audio was stopped manually, it will NOT resume the audio playback automatically via CarPlay. This is my experience…

You may or may not be able to prevent this automatic behavior if you disable Handoff on your iPhone (according to How to Stop Apple Music from Automatically Playing - 6 Tips).

Play audio from iPhone on HomePod and other wireless speakers

To disable Handoff between iPhone and HomePod and other devices, go to Settings > General > AirPlay & Continuity.

The thing is that Handoff does more than just audio playback, and maybe you do not want to skip this functionality altogether.

Another idea may be to play with the Automatically AirPlay setting (also under Settings > General > AirPlay & Continuity).

[EricWEvers]

I will “second” the idea of manually pausing playback before turning the car off. With CarPlay (wired) at least, this seems to behave consistently; audio stopped automatically (due to car being turned off) resumes automatically, while audio paused manually needs to be restarted manually.

My wife’s car doesn’t have CarPlay, and she’s pretty sure that Bluetooth will not respect manual pausing, but she’s not positive.

Hope this is helpful!

-Eric

[ACautionaryTale]

@EricWEvers

I will “second” the idea of manually pausing playback before turning the car off. With CarPlay (wired) at least, this seems to behave consistently; audio stopped automatically (due to car being turned off) resumes automatically, while audio paused manually needs to be restarted manually.

Sadly, this does not work on either of our two Hondas

[liminal]

Yup, the shortcut automation is what I had to do in my BMW. Works beautifully.

[dustying]

My car just has plain old bluetooth audio connection, no smart features, so it’s like connecting to any other bluetooth speaker. I set up an automation when connecting to the car to give me a menu to choose from, so I can launch music, podcasts or disconnect, since when my wife’s in the car with me, she might want to use her phone instead, so I have a button automatically to turn off my bluetooth as an option.

[SpivR]

Marco, the author of Overcast, went into detail on this recently on one of his podcast episodes.

I’m sorry that I don’t have a link, but the TL;DR was non-deterministic behavior by Apple’s API and audio subsystem which makes it nearly impossible for audio apps to create a predictable, repeatable experience.

[EricWEvers]

That is frustrating. Sorry!

[Jezmund_Berserker]

I saw this and was very excited.

I opened shortcuts on my iPhone and attempted to create it.

I was reminded why I hate shortcuts and don’t use it. You’d think a search for CarPlay would turn up something. Anything. sigh

[liminal]

When creating a personal automation, scroll down the list until you get to carplay:

[cragfast]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.
I’ve tried the automations as an option, with mixed results. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work at all. Sometimes they work after a couple of seconds of unwanted playback: most notably this afternoon when I got back into the car having been listening to a comedy podcast and the CarPlay unit resumed playback just enough to say the word “Syphilis” before the automation kicked in and paused playback.

Fortunately, I was on my own!

[EricWEvers]

And despite my earlier claims, when I got into the car this morning, CarPlay resumed manually-paused music.

Heck if I know.

[cragfast]

Maybe the “new Siri” will fix it…