Can You Use Apple CarPlay With Multiple Phones?

Hitting the open road with CarPlay loaded on your vehicle's infotainment system is pretty useful for doing a wide variety of iPhone tasks while keeping your driving free of distractions. It's a great companion for a daily commute, but for long road trips with multiple people, it can get a little hairy depending on who wants to have control of the system.

While it is possible to have multiple devices connected to a vehicle's infotainment system, only one of them can have an active connection to CarPlay. The infotainment system will likely save every device that connects to it, but only a single device can be used at a given time. If you want to switch between devices, you will need to use the infotainment's settings menu or have an iPhone forget the vehicle to accomplish this.

If you're looking to connect multiple phones for something like sharing music, remember that popular streaming services typically have a solution these days. For example, collaborative playlists with Apple Music or a Spotify Jam session may help eliminate the need for switching devices by allowing group playlists and queues.

While CarPlay can be great for a variety of things — and has some severely underrated features — juggling multiple devices can be a pain. Switching between devices is necessary if you're looking to use multiple phones, so let's first have a quick refresher on adding an iPhone to CarPlay.

Here are the general steps:

1. First, start the vehicle and ensure Siri is enabled on your iPhone. Your vehicle should also have wireless connections enabled, if available.

2. From the iPhone, navigate to the Settings Menu.

3. Tap General, then select CarPlay.

4. Select the vehicle from the available list.

5. Activate the vehicle's voice control, which will then activate CarPlay.

If your vehicle has a USB connection for CarPlay, simply plug the iPhone into the USB port. Certain vehicle models may label the USB port with an icon for convenience. If you need to switch between devices, the specific settings are going to greatly depend on what type of infotainment system you have.

The steps will look something like this:

1. Navigate to your infotainment's Settings menu.

2. Look for a section labeled Connected Devices or List of Smartphones.

3. Select the device you would like to connect.

You can also have an iPhone forget a CarPlay vehicle. Simply navigate to Settings > General > CarPlay on your iPhone, select the vehicle under My Cars, and then tap Forget This Car on the next screen. Another iPhone will then be able to connect to the vehicle.