Apple adds widgets and message tapbacks to carplay on iOS26

Apple announces iOS 26 At WWDC 2025and along with the new “liquid glass” design language, the company has revealed several new features in Carplay.

The two biggest additions are the widgets appearing on CarPlay. The same goes for the ability to select a “top-back” response to incoming messages. Users can also pin their favorite conversations, like iMessage.

Another change highlighted in Monday’s event is that the incoming call UI will no longer take over the entire CarPlay screen. Instead, the UI is smaller and is located at the bottom of the screen. This means that the phone won’t hide anything like navigation in progress.

CarPlay gets an overall design refresh featuring a more transparent styling of liquid glass, and these changes will be all Newcal Play Ultra was released in May. As always with WWDC, when Apple meets with the developers, look forward to more details about Carplay changes over the next few days.