Have you ever moved to a new city and parked your car somewhere new, but you can’t remember where you put it after a long day? If yes, then you are not alone. Many people experience this on a daily basis.
That’s why Apple Maps has a feature where you can find your parked car. If you want to learn how to do this, read on, and we’ll show you the basics.
Make sure you have enabled Bluetooth or CarPlay
Before you can find your parked car, you will need to enable Bluetooth or CarPlay with your vehicle. Most new vehicles have CarPlay. If you’re curious whether or not your car supports CarPlay, you can check Apple’s CarPlay page for a list of supported models.
However, if your vehicle is not on the list, you can enable Bluetooth instead. You don’t need both CarPlay and Bluetooth for this feature to work. You just need one or the other. If you’re having trouble with CarPlay, we’ve included a few fixes to get CarPlay working.
You’ll know if your car has Bluetooth if you can connect your phone to your car stereo system without an AUX or USB cable.
Turn on Significant Places for Apple Maps
Next, you need to make sure that you have enabled Important Locations. Most people have it enabled by default, but you might want to check anyway. After all, you’ll want to make sure the feature works before parking in a new spot.
To do this, open the Settings app on your Find iPhone and go to Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Location.
How to Find Your Car in Apple Maps
Once you have completed the above steps to enable Significant Places on your Find iPhone, you can go to Settings > Maps and enable Show Parked Location.
After enabling it, you are ready to start driving. You just need to make sure that your Find iPhone is connected to your vehicle while driving. When you park, you’ll get an alert from Apple showing you where your car is parked.
This will drop a pin on the map showing the location of your car. When you’re ready to return to your vehicle, you can navigate there like any other destination.
The parked car feature has limitations
The feature works great for metropolitan areas, but some rural areas claim that the feature doesn’t work for them. It can also be confusing to use in a parking garage, as it will show the location, but you may forget which level you are on.
It also won’t work for frequently visited places like home or work. However, this feature can be helpful, and Apple may improve on it in the future.
If you have a compatible car or stereo unit, Apple CarPlay makes it easy to navigate, respond to messages, and play music on the road. And to get the most out of this feature, you need to have apps compatible with CarPlay installed on your iPhone.
Let’s take a look at some of the best Apple CarPlay apps that are worth using.
A Note on Available CarPlay Apps
Unfortunately, only a small selection of iOS apps are compatible with CarPlay. Most of them fall into one of three categories: audio, navigation, or messaging. As a result, you probably won’t install many of these apps, as they overlap a lot. For example, if you already use Apple Music, there’s no need to install Spotify.
Starting with iOS 16, CarPlay will also support fueling and driving apps, such as those designed to help you find lower gas prices or check toll rates. As of this writing, they are not supported yet.
We’ll cover the most useful built-in CarPlay apps so you know how to use them, then move on to some of the best third-party apps for CarPlay. If you use a different audio or navigation service than the one we’ve highlighted here, it’s likely that it’s also available for CarPlay.
If you’re wondering how to add apps to CarPlay, you don’t need to do anything special. Install the app on your Find iPhone as normal, then open it once to walk you through any initial setup. If the app works with CarPlay, you’ll see it in the list of apps on your vehicle’s display after you connect your device to your car.
If you’re new to the feature, read our overview of Apple CarPlay first to get you up to speed. Also, while this isn’t a proper CarPlay app, keep in mind that you can tap Now Playing from the app list to jump straight to whatever audio source is active.