Do you run Syn 4 or Apple CarPlay?

[sonofzell]

It seems to me Sync 4 and CarPlay can be used together other than if you are streaming music directly from your phone. Here you have to choose between CarPlay and Sync.

I've found the ability to run carplay AND Sync functions simultaneously to be one of the best features of the new system. You now can essentially pick-and-choose either system for audio/navigation as you wish (communication may not be as fluent - I do think Apple takes precedence for calls/texts when carplay is active, but not 100% sure).

is there a way to completely disable the Sync 4 navigation? I just want to use the Car Play Google Maps and Waze

I'm not sure if this can be permanently "disabled", but I'm not sure there's a need to do that. I also prefer waze/apple maps to the sync nav, and simply activate the carplay tab to use them (regardless of what audio source I'm using). I've found that if you activate Siri using the steering wheel control, the carplay tab is brought to the foreground of the primary display automatically.

As a geek, I find the Sync navigation REALLY intriguing - mostly for the integration with the dash cluster display, which is awesome. That being said, I always seem to go back to carplay apps for two reasons:
1. The integration with Siri (Apple Maps) and Siri shortcuts (Waze) on carplay
2. The absolutely nonsensical routing that Sync often uses. Sometimes I swear that Sync would take me to the other side of town and back in order to get to my next-door neighbor's house!

I pressed the voice button on the steering wheel and the Siri icon popped up on the screen in the truck but when I said "call mom" it did nothing. Just acted like it was still waiting for me to say something.

Sounds like a simple Siri bug, but just for the sake of troubleshooting: when carplay is active, the voice command button on your steering wheel becomes dual-function... a single press will activate the Sync voice response system, while a long press will activate Siri via carplay. You obviously may already know that and I don't intend to be insulting if you do - I just know it's easy to miss the basics sometimes (Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? ? ).

All my issues went away when I disabled wireless Carplay entirely, and just used it wired only.
-Can use Wifi Hotspot again
-All music stuttering issues went away
-Sudden loss of audio and weird Carplay connectivity issues (it sees my phone but won't work with it) went away
-Audio quality issues went away

That's curious. I've not experienced any similar issues with wired/wireless carplay behaving differently. Carplay controls are 100% less "responsive" than the native Sync (perhaps confirming @sagarpatel 's theory lol), but equally so with or without being plugged in. I do notice that the iPhone will disable its wifi when connected wirelessly, and that attempting to re-enable it will prompt a warning that carplay will be disconnected; that may be related to the issues with using your hotspot, but I haven't tried that to confirm. It might explain the inability to use hotspot when connected wirelessly...

I also wonder if the audio quality issues people are reporting are related to the audio source. If people are playing actual audio files stored on their iPhone, there's obviously going to be a lot of variables regarding the quality/bitrate. I primarily use Apple music, but occasionally will use other audio apps via carplay (podcasts, spotify, audiobooks, espn, etc.) and have not noticed any loss in quality vs. sirius via Sync or FM.

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[wayfarer556]

I've found the ability to run carplay AND Sync functions simultaneously to be one of the best features of the new system. You now can essentially pick-and-choose either system for audio/navigation as you wish (communication may not be as fluent - I do think Apple takes precedence for calls/texts when carplay is active, but not 100% sure).


I'm not sure if this can be permanently "disabled", but I'm not sure there's a need to do that. I also prefer waze/apple maps to the sync nav, and simply activate the carplay tab to use them (regardless of what audio source I'm using). I've found that if you activate Siri using the steering wheel control, the carplay tab is brought to the foreground of the primary display automatically.

As a geek, I find the Sync navigation REALLY intriguing - mostly for the integration with the dash cluster display, which is awesome. That being said, I always seem to go back to carplay apps for two reasons:
1. The integration with Siri (Apple Maps) and Siri shortcuts (Waze) on carplay
2. The absolutely nonsensical routing that Sync often uses. Sometimes I swear that Sync would take me to the other side of town and back in order to get to my next-door neighbor's house!


Sounds like a simple Siri bug, but just for the sake of troubleshooting: when carplay is active, the voice command button on your steering wheel becomes dual-function... a single press will activate the Sync voice response system, while a long press will activate Siri via carplay. You obviously may already know that and I don't intend to be insulting if you do - I just know it's easy to miss the basics sometimes (Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? ? ).


That's curious. I've not experienced any similar issues with wired/wireless carplay behaving differently. Carplay controls are 100% less "responsive" than the native Sync (perhaps confirming @sagarpatel 's theory lol), but equally so with or without being plugged in. I do notice that the iPhone will disable its wifi when connected wirelessly, and that attempting to re-enable it will prompt a warning that carplay will be disconnected; that may be related to the issues with using your hotspot, but I haven't tried that to confirm. It might explain the inability to use hotspot when connected wirelessly...

I also wonder if the audio quality issues people are reporting are related to the audio source. If people are playing actual audio files stored on their iPhone, there's obviously going to be a lot of variables regarding the quality/bitrate. I primarily use Apple music, but occasionally will use other audio apps via carplay (podcasts, spotify, audiobooks, espn, etc.) and have not noticed any loss in quality vs. sirius via Sync or FM.

Wireless Carplay literally uses WiFi. It's part of the spec. If you engage wireless Carplay then your phone can't use it's wifi antenna for anything else.

And yeah I mean the concept of audio source isn't lost on me. It's the same files playing the same music. Wireless Carplay can transmit audio "up to" CD quality, but I'm willing to bet that how good the quality actually is depends a great deal on the quality of the wifi connection itself. It's that specific variable (where I suspect Ford's built in hotspot router) just isn't up to the job 100% of the time.

 

[wmuav8tor]

Sounds like a simple Siri bug, but just for the sake of troubleshooting: when carplay is active, the voice command button on your steering wheel becomes dual-function... a single press will activate the Sync voice response system, while a long press will activate Siri via carplay. You obviously may already know that and I don't intend to be insulting if you do - I just know it's easy to miss the basics sometimes (Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? ? ).

In trying to figure it out I have tried both quick pressing and long pressing the steering wheel button. In both cases the siri icon shows up but doesn't hear me when I talk. Seems Sync wont even respond when carplay is on. So probably a software bug.

Yes, I actually did try turning everything off and on several times, When the planes I fly don't work turning them off then back on usually fixes it so that was one of the first things I did ?

It's not a huge deal to me, i'll play around with it some more later. Thanks for the reply.

 

[HDT05]

I also wonder if the audio quality issues people are reporting are related to the audio source.

I've found that the location of the phone seems to make a difference. I had been sitting it in the slot next to the gear selector instead of in the little movable cup in the front of the console and started having issues of music cutting in and out..... moved it back to the front and songs are (for the moment) playing without issue....

 

[DVT413]

I think I figured it out. Go to settings and select Phone List

Then select your phone. You can then click on Connect to Car Play. Button will then show up. Still have not figured out how to delete a phone.

Ah man, thank you SO much. I'll give this a shot. Much appreciated.

 

[GolfR]

I have been playing a lot with the different configurations discussed in this thread along with the Ford+Alexa app. In addition to the decision of carplay vs Sync 4 is the potential decision of disabling carplay and using Waze as the default navigation application in Sync. I've found some benefits to this solution. Note that what I use the most in the car is Waze, Amazon Music, and would like good integration with Alexa. I have only used wireless Carplay thus far.

Here are some observations...

The direct sync 4 integration with Waze seems to integrate better with the audio directions and alerts. Car play pops up and totally mutes music while the integrated Waze solution drops the volume of music and doesn't cut out as long. I think this may be what others have observed as cutting out the FM station. It does go back to the radio but it takes a long time.

The Waze screen takes up more of the screen in the sync 4 integrated function and doesn't loose real estate to the CarPlay side screen. I think running Waze through sync also makes the graphics a little better.

HUGE downside to Waze sync app integration is that the app has to be the active app on your phone and you can't turn the screen off. I need to check my settings to figure out if there is a better way to setup the phone to allow waze to run in the background. There also seems to be an issue where the Waze screen on the dash will not display the map and I have to switch apps on the phone and then back to Waze and the problem seems to fix itself.

Integration with amazon music seems to work better when not on car play. I have always had issues with amazon music and carplay crashing the amazon music app. This is consistent with how things work in my wife's Subaru. The amazon music app interface in carplay is total trash too.

Using amazon music from the phone and not through car play seems to result in better audio quality. This is also true with using the Ford+Alexa functionality as the audio quality seems better with that function than car play.

Ford+Alexa is a little hokey. I haven't figure out the magic combination of what needs to be open on the screen to get Alexa as the voice assistant that pops up with the steering wheel button. Sometimes it give me Sync, sometimes it gives me Siri, and sometimes it gives me Alexa.

Using Ford+Alexa to play music is convenient, results in good audio quality, but does not display the song or artist on the screen. This kind of sucks. Using the amazon music app is a better solution but you have to run the app from you phone rather than the screen. This is also a problem due to the Waze / Sync integration that requires the waze app be the active app on your phone.

In the end, I'm running now with CarPlay turned off. This seems to be the best case of multiple evils. If I can find the secret decoder ring for how to consistently run the Ford+Alexa functionality and get Waze to stay up when I switch apps on the phone it will be a no brainer to stick with this configuration.

Based on some of the comments on here, I'm going to try out running thing wired and maybe some of the things on here will sort themselves out that way.

 

[sonofzell]

Using amazon music from the phone and not through car play seems to result in better audio quality. This is also true with using the Ford+Alexa functionality as the audio quality seems better with that function than car play.

Have you been able to use the Ford+Alexa app through carplay??? I gave this app a test run in my 2018 that was very short-lived because its performance was dismal. If I recall correctly, it was only available via the native sync interface.

I appreciate your thoughts, although I myself have chosen to go the opposite direction (pretty much eliminating sync altogether for nav & audio). That being said, if Ford+Alexa has been updated with carplay integration, I may be tempted to have another look at it just out of curiosity...

 

[GolfR]

Have you been able to use the Ford+Alexa app through carplay??? I gave this app a test run in my 2018 that was very short-lived because its performance was dismal. If I recall correctly, it was only available via the native sync interface.

I appreciate your thoughts, although I myself have chosen to go the opposite direction (pretty much eliminating sync altogether for nav & audio). That being said, if Ford+Alexa has been updated with carplay integration, I may be tempted to have another look at it just out of curiosity...

You have to disable CarPlay to use the Ford+Alexa capability. It seems to me like a no-brainer that Amazon should update their iphone app to have a carplay interface. Unfortunately, I think they are more interested in selling echo devices for people's cars than making their iphone app useful.

 

[vCpu]

Anyone else have an issue with CarPlay, Where Spotify will play phone call quality music randomly. If i kill the app on phone. Or switch to YouTube music its fine.

 

[Roll.Tide]

I've found the ability to run carplay AND Sync functions simultaneously to be one of the best features of the new system. You now can essentially pick-and-choose either system for audio/navigation as you wish (communication may not be as fluent - I do think Apple takes precedence for calls/texts when carplay is active, but not 100% sure).


I'm not sure if this can be permanently "disabled", but I'm not sure there's a need to do that. I also prefer waze/apple maps to the sync nav, and simply activate the carplay tab to use them (regardless of what audio source I'm using). I've found that if you activate Siri using the steering wheel control, the carplay tab is brought to the foreground of the primary display automatically.

As a geek, I find the Sync navigation REALLY intriguing - mostly for the integration with the dash cluster display, which is awesome. That being said, I always seem to go back to carplay apps for two reasons:
1. The integration with Siri (Apple Maps) and Siri shortcuts (Waze) on carplay
2. The absolutely nonsensical routing that Sync often uses. Sometimes I swear that Sync would take me to the other side of town and back in order to get to my next-door neighbor's house!


Sounds like a simple Siri bug, but just for the sake of troubleshooting: when carplay is active, the voice command button on your steering wheel becomes dual-function... a single press will activate the Sync voice response system, while a long press will activate Siri via carplay. You obviously may already know that and I don't intend to be insulting if you do - I just know it's easy to miss the basics sometimes (Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again? ? ).


That's curious. I've not experienced any similar issues with wired/wireless carplay behaving differently. Carplay controls are 100% less "responsive" than the native Sync (perhaps confirming @sagarpatel 's theory lol), but equally so with or without being plugged in. I do notice that the iPhone will disable its wifi when connected wirelessly, and that attempting to re-enable it will prompt a warning that carplay will be disconnected; that may be related to the issues with using your hotspot, but I haven't tried that to confirm. It might explain the inability to use hotspot when connected wirelessly...

I also wonder if the audio quality issues people are reporting are related to the audio source. If people are playing actual audio files stored on their iPhone, there's obviously going to be a lot of variables regarding the quality/bitrate. I primarily use Apple music, but occasionally will use other audio apps via carplay (podcasts, spotify, audiobooks, espn, etc.) and have not noticed any loss in quality vs. sirius via Sync or FM.

I’m 74 years old and a lot of this is way out of my skill set. You obviously have a better grip on the technology. I have a million questions but if you don’t mind helping me out here are my top 2.
1. I can only connect car play via Wi-Fi (proj) if I choose Bluetooth it disconnects CarPlay.
2.I prefer wireless connectivity but would reluctantly go to wired if it allows me to use both

 

[sonofzell]

I’m 74 years old and a lot of this is way out of my skill set. You obviously have a better grip on the technology. I have a million questions but if you don’t mind helping me out here are my top 2.
1. I can only connect car play via Wi-Fi (proj) if I choose Bluetooth it disconnects CarPlay.
2.I prefer wireless connectivity but would reluctantly go to wired if it allows me to use both

Apologies Tide, I've been off this forum for a while and just saw this today.

1. You are correct in your observation; the Sync Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay are really "either/or" environments, at least in regard to audio, apps and communications. Essentially, you have the choice to choose one OR the other to be active at any given time. "using both" simultaneously is not possible (nor would it be advisable), as your incoming calls/texts and your voice commands will be handled much differently depending on which is active. Keep in mind, this is for your audio/com/app functions only... when you enable Bluetooth in your phone list settings, you're essentially telling your truck you want your calls and audio requests to be displayed with the Sync interface. When you enable CarPlay for that same device, your truck knows to present those items within Apple's interface. In this context, I can't imagine why (or even how) you'd want to use both simultaneously, so I may be misunderstanding the question - if you want to elaborate I'll gladly help if I can.

The exception to this exclusivity is the native navigation. Since the Sync nav really has no communication or dependency with your phone, it can be operated at any time, regardless of whether you're in carplay or Bluetooth mode.

2. To my knowledge, I don't believe that wired vs. wireless has any effect on this behavior.

 

[Roll.Tide]

Apologies Tide, I've been off this forum for a while and just saw this today.

1. You are correct in your observation; the Sync Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay are really "either/or" environments, at least in regard to audio, apps and communications. Essentially, you have the choice to choose one OR the other to be active at any given time. "using both" simultaneously is not possible (nor would it be advisable), as your incoming calls/texts and your voice commands will be handled much differently depending on which is active. Keep in mind, this is for your audio/com/app functions only... when you enable Bluetooth in your phone list settings, you're essentially telling your truck you want your calls and audio requests to be displayed with the Sync interface. When you enable CarPlay for that same device, your truck knows to present those items within Apple's interface. In this context, I can't imagine why (or even how) you'd want to use both simultaneously, so I may be misunderstanding the question - if you want to elaborate I'll gladly help if I can.

The exception to this exclusivity is the native navigation. Since the Sync nav really has no communication or dependency with your phone, it can be operated at any time, regardless of whether you're in carplay or Bluetooth mode.

2. To my knowledge, I don't believe that wired vs. wireless has any effect on this behavior.

Thank you, let me poke around a little more and I’ll follow up with any other questions. By the way no need to apologize you’ve been a big help.

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