I’m putting this here for the sake of those who might be searching for help with CarPlay.
I have a 2016 Honda Accord with (wired) CarPlay and an iPhone 17Pro. I have sporadic CarPlay issues (going back a few phones)… the head unit will sometimes crash and lock up CarPlay, also scrambling other information like mpg tracking. Sometimes plugging and unplugging will work, sometimes I have to restart the car.
But I hit a new wrinkle yesterday. I plugged my phone in, and the smaller screen higher up on the dash came up fine (displaying the name of the podcast I was listening to), and the podcast app was playing, but the main screen showed nothing and no audio came through.
I did a bunch of the standard troubleshooting steps to no avail. (I even unplugged the phone and blew in the port!) But, when I rebooted the iPhone, I noticed that the VPN symbol came on. I had been using my VPN earlier in the day and hadn’t turned it off. That made me wonder…
Rebooted iPhone didn’t connect. Turn off the VPN, and immediately CarPlay connected with no trouble.
So, if you are experiencing issues with CarPlay not connecting and you are using a VPN (not iCloud Private Relay, but a full system-wide VPN), try turning the VPN off. It might be preventing your phone from communicating with the head unit in your car.
I hope this helps someone in the future!
-Eric