Best apps for listening to music on Carplay - 2023

Carplay is a convenient platform that allows you to safely use your mobile phone's features while driving.

One of the most popular features of Carplay is listening to music, podcasts and news on a head unit. This is becoming an indispensable part of our pastime during long trips or routine trips from home to work.

On Carplay, you can use audio players as well as many apps to help you find interesting content. Here are a few popular and handy apps you can use:

Spotify

The world's most popular app for playing music on iOS / Carplay.

The free version of Spotify has some limitations, including random playback and ads. However, if you use premium account, you can enjoy unlimited music listening without ads and save songs for offline listening.

Spotify has one of the largest music libraries, and constant updates improve the interface every time. You can create an account on multiple devices, integrate it with Carplay.

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Serialreader

If you like to listen to classic literature audio books, this app will help you get acquainted with the masterpieces on Carplay. This reader is based on a service model. You subscribe for a selected period and get a new issue every day.

Your task as a listener is to listen to the excerpt and meet the 20-minute deadline. This way you will have a great motivation to focus and listen to the excerpt of the book on Carplay. And so day after day you will dive into different works of classic literature.

In total, there are about 1,000 books to choose from. You can listen to books on different devices, and the interface of Serialreader will be convenient for all the users, who have ever dealt with mobile ebook readers.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle supports many book formats, but the focus is primarily on mobile: it's FB2, ePub, DjVU, etc. If you prefer to listen to audiobooks via Carplay system, and these needs the reader will satisfy without problems.

Books are added to the library automatically through intelligent search. This is incredibly convenient, since you don't have to search for files on your phone yourself, although a file manager is used for this purpose.

The interface of the Amazon Kindle app is very nice and fresh. You can also customize the design of the books to your tastes. In the quick settings - font sizes, indents. Going into the advanced settings, you will find customization of styles, colors, panels, animations.

Apple Music

Apple Music does not require a lot of resources of the mobile device, so there is no braking in Apple Music.

On the main screen of the audio player there are two navigation panels. The top one allows you to sort all the available music in the following ways: tracks, artists, albums, genres, and in the full version - folders.

You can also change the view by sliding down the screen to the corresponding side. The side navigation bar is a menu and contains the following items: library, playlists, music search, equalizer, visualizer, and settings.

The equalizer in Apple Music has five bands as well as ready-made settings presets. In the top panel or by swiping to the sound effects menu you can go to the following functions: balance control, bass boost, sound virtualizer and amplifier.

By selecting "virtualizer" in the main menu, you can set up and enable a sound effect to accompany music playback.

Among the application settings there are such useful ones as "Apple Music" reaction to connecting/disconnecting headphones or to a call, as well as various interface and Carplay settings.

Pulsar Pro

The player with the beautiful name Pulsar is not very noticeable and, let's just say, not that popular among similar audio players on Carplay. But there's something about this application that's appealing, and the player's overall rating is about 4.5 points.

Pulsar music player for Carplay has classical interface, not burdened with effects and unnecessary "tinsel". It is designed in the style of the proverbial material design (which is rare for an ordinary music application). In "Pulsar" there are no gimmicks and unique sound settings, but you can configure it to suit you by changing the theme design (more than 15 options stocked for aesthetes). Everything in the mobile audio player is intuitive and friendly - just as the developers from Rhythm Software describe their brainchild.

Music management through the playlist in the audio player is the most that is standard. Among additional tools - ID3-editor, a convenient music library with a flexible search by audio records, folders, genres, artists and other metatags. For Carplay users who need to fine-tune the sound - an equalizer and multiband tone editor are provided with the player.

YouTube Music

YouTube app that allows you to listen to music and podcasts in the background. All tracks available on the YouTube platform are also available in this app.

The app allows you to view recommendations and create personalized playlists based on YouTube algorithms. The app also has an offline mode where you can download music and listen to it on Carplay, for example on a long trip where you won't have network coverage.

YouTube Music also has a lot of original context and exclusive releases created just for this platform. In addition to the music, you can view official music videos and artist intros available along with the track.

Tidal Music

Tidal has a peculiar interface. However, the developers claim that once you get used to the music player, the controls will seem as simple and convenient as possible. To familiarize yourself with the interface, you will be offered a short tutorial.

The main features of Tidal:

• Built-in music tag editor.
• Search, filter and sort songs
• Downloading covers and lyrics from the internet
• Multiband equalizer and sound amplifier
• Rating system of songs, recording statistics
• Customizable player interface
• Adding widgets to Carplay home screen

The home screen of this Carplay player is slightly different from the standard view. Half of the Tidal window is occupied by album cover art, the other part is occupied by song title, album, navigation, timeline, repeat and random playback toggles, track number and total number of songs in the folder/playlist.

There are three small buttons on the audio player panel: playlist, additional functions, and audio controls.

The Playlist button displays the current playlist instead of the cover art.

The additional functions include the following: jump to the album of the track and the current artist, information about the song and album, setting the cover art. By the way, the covers for the player are downloaded from the Internet or downloaded from Carplay Gallery.

The third key "feature" of the Tidal is the setting of the sound. To adjust the sound, you can use

• Five equalizer controls
• Bass virtualizer and amplifier
• select reverb (echo) mode
• keep or select the default equalizer presets.

Tip. If you want to expand the possibilities of Tidal, download the free dsp package with sound effects. It includes:

• 10-band equalizer with preamp (sound amplifier)
• crossfade - smoothly changing tracks
• Gapless extension: removal of pauses and delays in music tracks

Subjective lack of Tidal is non-standard interface: not everyone will find it convenient. Otherwise, this app works without bugs and errors on Carplay.