iOS 26.4 was released last month, and it includes a couple of new features for CarPlay: an Ambient Music widget and support for voice-based chatbot apps.
To update your iPhone 11 or newer to iOS 26.4, open the Settings app and tap on General → Software Update. CarPlay will automatically offer the new features so long as the iPhone connected to your vehicle is running iOS 26.4 or later.
Below, we have outlined the two new CarPlay features.
Ambient Music Widget
CarPlay gained support for widgets on iOS 26. To view them, swipe right on CarPlay's interface until you reach the Dashboard screen, shown below.
Starting with iOS 26.4, both the iPhone and CarPlay now have an Ambient Music widget option.
Apple introduced the Ambient Music feature on iOS 18.4 last year. It offers curated playlists based on themes such as Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing, with no Apple Music subscription required to listen to the songs.
To add the Ambient Music widget to a CarPlay widget stack, open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap on General → CarPlay → [Your Vehicle] → Widgets → Add Widget, select the Ambient Music option, and tap on the Add Widget button.
Chatbot Apps
Starting with iOS 26.4, CarPlay supports voice-based conversational apps. This means that chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude are able to extend their iPhone apps to CarPlay for voice-based conversations.
After iOS 26.4 was released, OpenAI made ChatGPT available on CarPlay.
Of course, Apple's own assistant Siri remains available on CarPlay, without needing to open an app. It was recently reported that Apple is testing a new Siri app for iOS 27 with chatbot-like functionality and conversation history, so it will be interesting to see if that Siri app is available on CarPlay in a voice-only state later this year.
