How To Develop A Carplay Enabled iOS App?

New technologies always provide a wide range of opportunities to optimize existing solutions or to develop new ones. It is worth noting that it is easier to gain popularity and find your audience in a market that is currently developing. The connected car industry is expected to add another 24 million vehicles. So if you are not limited to developing apps for smartphones or smartwatches only, you are on the right track.

Carplay enabled iOS app

CarPlay basics

The CarPlay Framework consists of templates that you set up in your code and send to the interface driver, which in turn takes care of all the rendering.

Entitlement to CarPlay

CarPlay permission is required for all CarPlay apps. Go to Apple’s website and enter the information regarding your app along with the CarPlay app category. If your app meets the CarPlay eligibility criteria, Apple will generate a CarPlay permission and notify you.

Assess your claim

Once you’ve been entitled to CarPlay, sign in to your Apple Developer account and create a new Provisioning Profile that will include the entitlement.

Add the key below to the info.plist file

The name of the class that serves as a scene delegate is defined in the manifest using UISceneDelegateClassName. Your delegate must match CPTemplateApplicationSceneDelegate. Once your app is running, you’ll be notified of the CPInterfaceController, which manages all the templates on the CarPlay screen. Hold the controller, as you will need it to manage templates, such as displaying the screen of the currently playing video or notifications.

Write the code

  • Action sheet template.
  • Notification template.
  • Contact template.
  • Grid template.
  • Information template.
  • List template.

Try it on the simulator

The Simulator can be used to test CarPlay applications, but while the Simulator is useful during development, many CarPlay features are not available in the Simulator and you should not rely on it as your primary means of developing applications. It is strongly recommended that you build and test CarPlay applications on a vehicle or aftermarket system that supports wireless CarPlay.

Conclusion

Creating a CarPlay enabled app is a relatively simple exercise for an experienced iOS developer. The most difficult part of the whole process is the paperwork and approvals required to jump through Apple’s approval process, followed by on-device testing to ensure the app behaves correctly on the actual hardware head unit.