Purchased Apple Carplay in the BMW Connected Drive but it still doesn’t appear in the menu? Carplay is not available on mobile devices? The solution is simple, but BMW hasn’t described it anywhere.

Carplay purchased and activated – where do I find the features? How do I activate Carplay in my car?

So I bought a 3-year subscription for Apple Carplay via Connected Drive for about 290€. About an hour later BMW informed me via SMS and email that Carplay was now available in my car. So I went to the garage, looking forward to the iOS integration – and was disappointed.

There was no Carplay. Nowhere in the menu of the BMW I could find anything that was connected to Carplay. Also in the management of the mobile devices I could not activate Carplay anywhere. At the point where I was supposed to be able to activate Carplay for my smartphone, there was no Carplay option available.

Reconnect iPhone to the car

The problem was probably that the iPhone intended for Carplay was already paired with the car via Bluetooth or still is. However, the initial pairing for the carplay services always occurs when the Bluetooth connection is first established.

So if the iPhone does not show an option for carplay, the following simple steps will help:

  1. Delete iPhone in the BMW iDrive under “Manage mobile devices”.
  2. Delete BMW Bluetooth connection in the iPhone in the Bluetooth menu by pressing “Ignore this device”.
  3. Connect iPhone again with the BMW via Bluetooth. This time Carplay is also available.