CarPlay extremely buggy

[technologiq]

Spotify on CarPlay is buggy bordering on unusable.   If I try to play my starred playlist, I just get a 'empty' looking playlist.  Sometimes it will start playing something after 30 or so seconds but most of the time it does nothing.

Spotify will also randomly force close.  Music cuts, screen goes back to the main carplay menu.  

Sometimes it will startup normally but then I get no sound.

This is Spotify running on iOS 8.0.2 via iPhone 6+ on a Pioneer AVH-4000NEX head unit.

Please, please work on CarPlay. 

Edit 1-5-2015: Spotify 2.2.0.2464 on iOS 8.1.2 (12B440) on iPhone 6+ and the issues are still there.

Edit: 6-11-2015: Spotify 3.2.0.1554 on iOS 8.3 (12F70) on iPhone 6+: Recently I've had better luck with Spotify loading correctly and playing correctly. Occassionally I'll have audio break up (not sure if that's the iPhone 6+, Spotify or the head unit).     It should be noted that I like Spotify and don't care for other products out there (for some reason another product was marked as the solution to this thread).  I'm glad to see some positive movement for Spotify and CarPlay.

6-11-15 Update 2:   2 things happen frequently:  Songs play at 2x (skipping every few seconds).  Spotify stops responding for 4-5 seconds.

[lewthecanoe]

All of the above. Ditto to what Chrissfa says. iPhone 6s. iOS 9.2.1. Spotify 4.8.0 SPH DA-120. Totally unusable 95% of the time.

[dreadnaught]

I have SPH-DA120 installed in my summer car. Wen't to check up on the car couple of days ago and decided to test if Spotify Carplay had gotten any better. It hadn't. First thing that happened was the "music not playing" bug manifesting itself. You see the controls on the screen but no song title and no music. Disconnect, reconnect usually fixes it.

Spotify 4.8.0.1085

iPhone 6S running iOS9.2.1

There must be something wrong with Carplay also. I refuse to believe that this could only be Spotify's fault. Has anyone here tried Android Auto? Does Spotify work better there?

[ivassilis]

I just installed a Pioneer AVH 8700BT on my Rav4 and was really eager to have my Spotify playlists available. Unfortunately Spotify is extremely unreliable with CarPlay. I tried to open fresh everytime but nothing works. 

I just started my 3-month trial with Apple Music that works flawlessly on Carplay. I love Spotify's app and discover features but I cannot afford two music services so I give them these 3 months to make their app CarPlay reliable. Otherwise, it's bye bye for their Premium service. 

[lewthecanoe]

I also must add that other apps are also having problems. Audible often has the blank screen issue. Radioplayer, audioboom and orange radio app also.

I'm guessing its something inherently broken in CarPlay APIs.

Apple Music on the other hand works perfectly

iPhone 6s iOS 9.2.1 Spotify 4.8.0 SPH DA120

[ivassilis]

I agree. Even the Podcasts app has issues, as it often displays the shows with considerable delays (offline stored episodes).

So, yes Carplay looks half baked at the moment. Let’s hope iOS 9.3 will improve things.

[olaf777]

Using Spotify and french streaming service DEEZER. Both have the same problems with Apple Carplay. So ist seems to be a CarPlay problem - but streaming services have to work together with Apple! At least i am able to play songs in my VW car sound system - not via the menu but starting songs from iPhone (6s) works.

[toby0001]

Like i said before,all the third party apps struggle with CarPlay all the apps from Apple self works perfect.
My experience as long i use apps from Apple i enjoy CarPlay with other apps CarPlay suks.

[PJRM68]

Can't blame this on Apple. iheartradio, rdio (when it existed) and a couple
others work flawlessly for me on CarPlay, whereas Spotify never has. This
is a Spotify problem.

[lewthecanoe]

So...has 4.9.0 fixed some issues?
Worked fine all afternoon for me. Not one blank screen or hanging 'now playing' screen. Also seemed a bit more responsive (although that's probably just an illusion because it was working)

Could be fluke though..time will tell.

[deanvern]

Upgraded to 4.9.0 last night.  Today, got in my car, and same bug as before (music doesn't stop after disconnecting from carplay):

1. drive to work with Spotify playing via carplay

2. park, unplug my phone.  open door and get out

3. hear Spotify still playing out of my iphone speaker

4. manually get back into my phone and stop Spotify.

[dristie-nl]

I'm having the exact same problem as deanvern

Had this problem since 4.7.0. (In 4.7.0 the blank screen issue was solved for me)

This what happens:

1. drive to work with Spotify playing via carplay

2. park, PAUSE THE SONG SPOTIFY IS PLAYING, unplug my phone. open door and get out

Two things can happen:

1. hear Spotify still playing out of my iphone speaker

so I manually get back into my phone and pause Spotify.

If I make a phonecall (Yes, people still do that) and hang up, Spotify continues to play the last song again.

so I manually get back into my iphone and pause Spotify again.

Second phonecall and hang up and Spotify starts playing again.

And so on..

To stop this, Swipe Up to close Spotify

or

2. Spotify is NOT playing on my iphone.

But as soon as I make a phonecall and hang up, Spotify continues to play last song again

so I manually get back into my iphone and pause Spotify again.

Second phonecall and hang up and Spotify starts playing again.

And so on..

To stop this, Swipe Up to close Spotify

With other words to stop this, I need to close Spotify.

If you use a playlist, you can start all over again. So I have to shuffle, otherwise I would keep hearing the same songs as I'm driving.

So is it carplay problem or a Spotify problem? You decide..

[Chrissfa]

Strange how some people's main issue is spotify continuing to play and for others it's a total system melt down.

To anyone still having a lot of issues - take a look at how much space your Spotify install is taking up. I had no offline playlists yet the app was taking up 2.8GB of space. Uninstalled and did a fresh install the app is now a lot faster and I have a feeling that carplay has started to behave itself more - this was 4.8.0.

After re-install a few days ago the app is up to 352MB already though - what is Spotify doing here - caching played songs? And why is it doing it on my 16GB iPhone, where space is precious.

[lewthecanoe]

So it seems that 4.9.0 has solved all the issues for me except...

When I stop the car pause Spotify on the head unit and disconnect my phone. All is fine until a few mins later when I hear music playing from my pocket whilst walking down the street. I unlock my phone and it's a completely random song from any one of my playlists.

This is a minor inconvenience compared to the previous issues but an inconvenience nonetheless. I've had no blank screens or hanging for a whole week now.

Have things improved for others?

[deanvern]

that's a remaining bug not fixed in 4.9.0 that myself and others have reported...

[dristie-nl]

I have a good feeling that after 3 months the bug (music starts playing right after lighting cable is disconnected in combination with Carplay) is finally solved in version 5.1.0.

In 5.0.0 the bug was not solved.

Yesterday and today I noticed that I don't even need to pause the music anymore, when leaving my car, but just to take out the lighting cable out of my phone whilemusic is playing and it just stops.

No more needing to pause the music after a few minutes or closing the app or hearing music playing out of your pockets..

Also when I connect my phone back to the lighting cable, the music resumes where it left off.

I couldn't be any happier..

I need to test 1 more thing.. that is just after disconnecting the phone to call someone right away.

Anyone still having problems??

Anyway thank you for solving the problem and please keep it solved!!!!!

[deanvern]

Yep, it seems too good to be true, but 5.1.0 seems to have solved the last major carplay bug I personally experience... the "music keeps playing after lightning disconnect" issue.

WOOT!!!!

Can't say I know of any major carplay bugs left.  I only get an occasional UI freeze with infinite spinner but seems sporadic.

I did once report that 3+ levels deep of playlist sub-folders causes a crash, but not sure that still exists.  I modified my playlists to eliminate a 3rd level.  I USED TO have Playlists > [Genre] > [Subgenre] > My Playlist but as soon as I got into Subgenre, it would crash.  Since, I just pulled all my playlists out into the top level Playlists > [Genres] > My Playlist.

[dristie-nl]

I found 1 big and 1 little bug.

For some reason today spotify drained my battery almost completely. See attachment.

When I left my car this morning, my battery was fully charged.

As you can see, Spotify ran for 8,8 hours in the background and that drained my battery abnormally.

No music was playing, the playlist had no more then 20 songs so if it started to play the other songs, if should have stopped after an hour. I have never seen this behaviour before.

The small bug I noticed is when switching apps (connected to car play) the music mutes.

I know, I know, don't text when driving, but I wasn't texting. I just wanted to start an app Flitsmeister.. (search the app store to find out what the app does. The app is made for Holland and Belgium 😉 )

I think I know where the problem comes from.. Since the previous problem is fixed, that music just stopes when disconnecting the lightning cable, I don't close Spotify anymore. If the problem occures, I just restart Spotify and the problem is gone.

You cannot simulate it, it just happens. This problem was also in version 5.0.0.

Please let me know if someone also experiencing this problem.

Other question: Is it possible to sort the music in a playlist on the carplay screen? In Spotify I sorted my playlist by recently added. When I check my car screen, I see that the oldest song on top. I just use my iphone screen to navigate between songs.

So if someone has a usefull tip, please share..

[Hball]

Well, I switched back to Spotify after using Apple Music for a while, because I worked out how to get Spotify to play nicely with my Pioneer CarPlay HU.

it's still buggy - but I have found if you press "play" on the phone itself, it seems to kick-start the head unit into behaving.

So, whilst I still get a blank expression from Spotify directly via Carplay, I can give it a boost by pressing PLAY on the phone.

Good enough for me for now, and hopefully Spotify can use this info.

[Morac]

There is a major bug with Spotify's CarPlay implementation that manifests one of two ways:

1. Spotify always starts playing whenever CarPlay connects even when it was not the last audio app to play. It will even wrest control away from the audio app that last played. This requires me to open the app I was listening and start playback again. For example, if I switch to the CarPlay audio source on my Honda Accord Ex and the last app I was using was Pandora, Pandora will start to play and then Spotify will start playing. This also happens when I was last using Apple Music. For example, I can play something in Apple Music, switch to FM radio and then switch back to CarPlay and Spotify starts playing. Spotify will also start playing when using Maps via CarPlay and voice navigation occurs. That is highly annoying. The only way to stop this from happening is to restart the iPhone (6s Plus) or uninstall the Spotify app. Force killing Spotify doesn't help, since it launches itself again.  That leads me to issue #2...

2. When I uninstalled the Spotify app and reinstalled it and logged in, I couldn't get Spotify to play using the CarPlay controls. It would appear to be playing in the app when I looked at my iPhone (playback bar was moving), but no audio would actually play. If I was using another audio app previously, that app would continue to play. The only way to get Spotify to work with CarPlay is to press pause on the iPhone itself. This gets Spotify to start working in the CarPlay interface and I can select songs and they will play. At least until I start playing audio in a different CarPlay audio app at which point Spotify won't work again. I've found that playing audio in Spotify via CarPlay, switching to another audio app (like Apple Music), but not playing anything and then switching away from the CarPlay source in my car and back again fixes this problem, but causes problem #1 above to start happening again.

Basically Spotify won't play audio in CarPlay until I press pause in the app on my iPhone or it will always play the last song, even when it shouldn't be doing so as it wasn't the last CarPlay audio app playing.

In both cases it's horribly broken, though #1 is a lot worse since Spotify keeps stealing control from other audio apps or even the radio or SiriusXM whenever it feels like.  

I had this problem on iOS 9.2.1 and it persists in iOS 9.3.

[Morac]

I emailed Spotify support and after they asked me a series of questions that had nothing to do with the issue, they came back and said my car isn't supported.

That makes little sense.

Today I ran into another problem. I was listening to Spotify over CarPlay and an incoming call came in. The car kept trying to switch to the phone call screen and Spotify kept taking control back and switching to the Spotify app screen. Finally the phone screen displayed after the call had rung a few times.