[aremmell]

I have filed an internal bug report (I work at Apple). We will see what they have to say for themselves.

[Th3DarkSide]

Originally Posted by aremmell

I have filed an internal bug report (I work at Apple). We will see what they have to say for themselves.

When this first started happening I thought my track buttons were Broken on the G80. Eventually I realized that CarPlay wasn’t loading correctly and it was occurring on the wife’s X3 and our new X5. I had hoped that a software update would fix it like the fix for the map location issue. No such luck.

[Berzerker]

Originally Posted by aremmell

Has anyone else experienced this problem? My iPhone (15 Pro, latest iOS) is paired to the car using CarPlay (enhanced integration = true), but sometimes while listening to music (usually in the Spotify app), the prev/next track buttons on the steering wheel have no effect:

- Sometimes it says "Unknown artist" on the instrument cluster like it's changing tracks but to a null song.
- Most of the time just does nothing.

Tapping the prev/next buttons on the screen works while this is happening.

I'm out of ideas other than trying to un-pair them and start over and hope that fixes it. Maybe it's a Spotify bug

I have never had this issue with the default Music app (I also use Apple Music), I do sometimes get the unknown track thing, but that's a connection issue and I blame BMW for that. I quickly flip down control center and re-enable wifi to disconnect carplay temporarily before it auto-reconnects and it's fine after that.

Once it's fine though, zero issues. I *am* on 03/2024 though, so that might be part of the issue. I do remember 07/2023 being one of the buggier when it comes to carplay (not as bad as 03/2023 and earlier with the GPS issues)

[aremmell]

Originally Posted by Berzerker

I have never had this issue with the default Music app (I also use Apple Music), I do sometimes get the unknown track thing, but that's a connection issue and I blame BMW for that. I quickly flip down control center and re-enable wifi to disconnect carplay temporarily before it auto-reconnects and it's fine after that.

Once it's fine though, zero issues. I *am* on 03/2024 though, so that might be part of the issue. I do remember 07/2023 being one of the buggier when it comes to carplay (not as bad as 03/2023 and earlier with the GPS issues)

If I disconnect and re-connect CarPlay, the buttons work again... for a while. I thought it may have only been Spotify, but then I reproduced it in Apple Music too.

I am going to try connecting the phone w/ USB and see if it still happens.

On the internal bug report that I filed, someone from the CarPlay team commented that they don't even see the commands in the log from the steering wheel buttons–only from the touch screen. That sounds like a connection problem to me, but hopefully they will figure it out. They haven't refused the bug yet, which is a good sign .

[SwankPeRFection]

FYI, there has ALWAYS been an issue with Bluetooth connected streaming music controls on cars and iOS. If you’re streaming songs locally stored in the Music app music controls to skip songs and go back and forward works fine. If however you’re streaming Apple Music, when you try to skip songs to the next or previous, it drops out of Apple Music songs and goes back to your locally stored ones. Really silly and it’s definitely an iOS bug. Considering song info also doesn’t properly propagate from Apple Music stream to the car info when such a connection is used, I wouldn’t put it past the iOS devs that the same buggy behavior didn’t make into CarPlay as well. They should look into those car control interactions on all connection types. I bet they’d find and fix the root cause of these issues. Controlling the music via the iPhone itself is the only stable workaround for this and what has to be done for it to work right when utilizing Apple Music streams.

[aremmell]

Originally Posted by SwankPeRFection

FYI, there has ALWAYS been an issue with Bluetooth connected streaming music controls on cars and iOS. If you’re streaming songs locally stored in the Music app music controls to skip songs and go back and forward works fine. If however you’re streaming Apple Music, when you try to skip songs to the next or previous, it drops out of Apple Music songs and goes back to your locally stored ones. Really silly and it’s definitely an iOS bug. Considering song info also doesn’t properly propagate from Apple Music stream to the car info when such a connection is used, I wouldn’t put it past the iOS devs that the same buggy behavior didn’t make into CarPlay as well. They should look into those car control interactions on all connection types. I bet they’d find and fix the root cause of these issues. Controlling the music via the iPhone itself is the only stable workaround for this and what has to be done for it to work right when utilizing Apple Music streams.

Looks like I have another bug report to file. I'll see if I can reproduce that behavior in my 2019 Tacoma (no CarPlay).

How do I make sure I'm trying to play streaming tracks instead of downloaded ones? I think I've downloaded my entire library. Maybe I can un-download an album.

[SwankPeRFection]

So in Music on the iPhone, don’t play stuff out of the Library at the bottom. Go to Browse or Search and find an album or type of music to stream play. If you play downloaded (locally saved on device) music, you won’t see the bug. Locally stored media files in the Library will play in whatever order you have them, same for Playlists. You have to be playing something which is “queued” up via a stream. This is why I think the bug is happening… for some reason, Previous/Next (RW/FF) buttons while streaming are issuing a different instruction set because the source media or rather the organization of the source media is different in that “makeshift” playlist than if the media was stored locally. Ideally you’d think the functions for the buttons would be the same, but they’re not and that’s why when you hit previous or next, it drops out of Apple Music streaming and plays some random song from your local Library list instead. Have the devs look at the simple instruction set of prev trac or next trac and see if they’re doing anything different if playing online va local. The car buttons on Bluetooth connected setups I believe will issue the base media player instruction set and that might be different than the one the GUI on the phone uses or switches between depending on media source location.

There is also a very slim chance this bug is dependent also on the Bluetooth chipset and supported instruction set each car’s audio system uses, but I’m not 100% sure on that. Try your test and see what you get.

Thank you for your help on this.



BTW, here’s an example of someone experiencing similar issues, so it’s definitely not isolated. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254954317


Also, I’ve seen other reports where the song info stops updating when someone is connected by Bluetooth and playing songs, but doesn’t happen when plugged in, which ironically sounds quite similar to the issue where this happens on wireless CarPlay but not wired CarPlay. There is a root bug somewhere from back in the day that affected Bluetooth stuff and now it’s also inherently causing the same issue on the WiFi CarPlay connections. At least this is my belief.

[bmmr]

Originally Posted by aremmell

Has anyone else experienced this problem? My iPhone (15 Pro, latest iOS) is paired to the car using CarPlay (enhanced integration = true), but sometimes while listening to music (usually in the Spotify app), the prev/next track buttons on the steering wheel have no effect:

- Sometimes it says "Unknown artist" on the instrument cluster like it's changing tracks but to a null song.
- Most of the time just does nothing.

Tapping the prev/next buttons on the screen works while this is happening.

I'm out of ideas other than trying to un-pair them and start over and hope that fixes it. Maybe it's a Spotify bug

I am trying this automation in shortcuts, seems to work so far. It will give a notification though, not sure if that can be disabled. There will be a slight delay connecting to CarPlay when you first get into the car since the shortcut is disconnecting and connecting from CarPlay, but hopefully should solve the main issues in this thread.

Edit:

To turn off shortcut notifications can try this trick:
https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/c...ns_working_as/

[Th3DarkSide]

Interesting. I’m going to give this a shot this weekend. How much of a delay is there? Sometimes CarPlay has a delay all on its own anyway.

Edit. Why turn Bluetooth on and off in shortcuts? Curious because shutting WiFi on and off in Control center fixes the issue every time

[Th3DarkSide]

I’m going to try this today

[aremmell]

Great idea. It would be nice if BMV/Apple would fix it (I don't have this issue in other vehicles), but a workaround is second best!

[bmmr]

Originally Posted by Th3DarkSide

I’m going to try this today

I would watch out for connection loops. CarPlay connects, disconnects, connects again (triggers shortcut again) and so on. The WiFi trigger has a 3 minute delay feature which stops the loop in my testing.

[bmmr]

Originally Posted by Th3DarkSide

Interesting. I’m going to give this a shot this weekend. How much of a delay is there? Sometimes CarPlay has a delay all on its own anyway.

Edit. Why turn Bluetooth on and off in shortcuts? Curious because shutting WiFi on and off in Control center fixes the issue every time

Bluetooth may not be needed, I didn’t get around to testing without it. I assumed it was needed since wireless CarPlay may require Bluetooth and WiFi and kept it in just in case.

There was not much of a delay in my experience, maybe 2-5 to seconds

[Th3DarkSide]

Originally Posted by bmmr

Bluetooth may not be needed, I didn’t get around to testing without it. I assumed it was needed since wireless CarPlay may require Bluetooth and WiFi and kept it in just in case.

So. I tried the setup above and it woudnt re-connect to CarPlay in the wife’s X5. It disconnected it when I entered the car but had trouble reconnecting. I’ll try your setup later today or tomorrow in my G80.