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ZDNET's key takeaways
- CarPlay makes iPhone apps easier to use in the car.
- Keep your focus on driving, not apps.
- Most CarPlay apps mirror the apps on your iPhone.
I like driving, which is a good thing since I live in a rural area. Whether it's work trips or traveling to some remote trailhead to get a few days away from it all (my latest obsession is section hiking Hadrian's Wall), I spend a lot of time behind the wheel. Over the past 12 months, I've covered more than 25,000 miles. That's a lot of time in the driver's seat, and plenty of time to find the very best apps to help make whatever trip I'm on as quick, easy, and painless as possible.
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Since I'm an iPhone user, my platform of choice is CarPlay (except for the few times when CarPlay decided that it just wasn't going to work, and I had to dig out an old handset and hope I could get Android Auto to work), so that's the platform I'll be covering here.
If you're an Android user, you might be lucky and find that the app I've looked at here is available in the Google Play Store.
Oh, and ignore the fact that I seem to be on the wrong side of the car. I'm in the UK, and we sit and drive on the opposite side.
My driving philosophy
Bottom line: Driving can go from smooth to dramatic to scary in the blink of an eye, and as such, it's an activity that deserves to command the majority of your attention. That means that fiddling with apps has to be kept to an absolute minimum.
Also:ย I've used Android Auto with Gemini for 2 months now – it's transformed my drives in 4 ways
I highly recommend pulling over somewhere safe to do anything beyond tapping a button or two, or giving Siri a voice command.
The apps I use
I have dozens of apps on my iPhone, but only a small number of those have a CarPlay variant, and of that subset, it's an even smaller number that…