This is for those of you who spend an inordinate amount of time in your cars. It’s been reported that Apple CarPlay is set to receive some meaningful updates as part of iOS 26.4, including the ability to (finally) watch videos when parked – useful if you have an EV and want to while away time while your car is being charged.
According to MacRumors.com, the feature was seen in the first public beta for the new update, released last week. This tallies with what Apple promised during the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) last year, saying on its developer website that iOS 26 would allow “people to watch their favourite videos from iPhone right on their CarPlay display when they aren’t driving.”
There is a big caveat to this, and that is that video playback over CarPlay only works over AirPlay, Apple’s proprietary video streaming protocol. This requires carmakers to build support for the feature into their cars’ software – and judging by how long it took for the widespread adoption of CarPlay itself, that won’t be the work of a moment. AirPlay also only operates over WiFi, so if your car does not have that, then tough luck.
Also set to be added in iOS 26 is a new Apple TV app, custom-built for CarPlay and (presumably) allowing for direct playback of the streaming service’s titles. We can only hope that other companies will be allowed to build their own CarPlay apps to bypass the AirPlay requirement. The above video by tech YouTuber Thomas Dye shows these features in action.
Interestingly, CarPlay will be able to detect if a car is being driven not by any vehicular data but from the connected iPhone’s accelerometer readings, MacRumors.com reports. This will enable the system to lock out video playback once the vehicle is on the move.
Separately, iOS 26.4 will also add CarPlay support for third-party AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. No, this won’t allow these systems to replace Siri as the top-level voice assistant – instead, you will need to open these apps on the CarPlay display to use them. This is similar to how messaging apps like WhatsApp work. iOS 26.4 is set to be released in either late March or early April.
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