Apple's CarPlay Update Revives What Android Auto Did 10 Years Ago

Alongside iOS 26 and a plethora of other updates previewed at WWDC earlier this week, Apple also showed off new improvements to CarPlay which feel familiar, mostly because they feel like bringing the original Android Auto experience into the modern era.

The new CarPlay experience in iOS 26 brings quite a few upgrades, but the ones that caught my attention right away were the arrival of Live Activities and widgets. With these, drivers get glanceable, timely information in their car without having to open apps or, worse, pick up their actual phones.

That’s the promise Android Auto sold itself on 10 years ago, but has long since abandoned.

When Android Auto first debuted back in 2014, the platform was very different from what we have today. Instead of focusing on apps and a dashboard, Google designed the experience to be as simple as possible. Navigation, phone, and music sat across the bottom bar for quick and easy access, with a “homescreen” that was powered by Google Now. You’d be able to see minimized directions, the weather, your music, and timely information from Calendar and Gmail. Simple, proactive, and not distracting. It was a great idea, but one that Google did away with in 2019 for an app-focused experience that has since evolved to be more and more like CarPlay.

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*Android Auto used to be proactive, now it’s all about apps*

Personally, I’ve long been frustrated by Google’s decision to follow Apple on both its car and smartwatch experiences. The proactive and simple designs of Android Auto and Wear OS “back in the day” were ahead of their time, and it often feels like time is just a circle with Google constantly playing catch up. Google throws away an idea only for Apple to pick it up much later, and Google to then reinvent it.

That cycle is repeating itself here with CarPlay and Android Auto.

Live Activities and widgets aren’t quite the same as what Android Auto was doing when it first launched, but they take those same ideas and bring them to the modern age. This is exactly what Android Auto should have been doing all of this time. There are bits and pieces in the current experience that feel like they’re built on those older days, such as when addresses auto-populate in Maps based on your calendar, but they’re so scarce.

As mentioned, Google will probably circle back to this sort of proactive information in time, and it’s an area I could actually see Gemini being helpful. Widgets in CarPlay are also a great idea for Android Auto, though it would probably need to take on a different form.