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The general idea I think is that once you start the car, it just send a play command the moment it detects the connection.

And in theory it _can_ provide a really nice experience. For example I'm walking to my car listening to an audio book, the moment I start the car, BT is connecting to the phone and moves the audio playback from my AirPods to my car speaker without skipping a beat, its really impressive.

Additionally since I'm an Apple Music user, whenever I start the car, it just defaults to whatever's I've been listening to there, unless there was a book / podcast or even YouTube video playing before. Which is very often quite nice.

Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice a.k.a. Spotify" is questionable, and why the automatic play is also not configurable is beyond me.

Just wanted to give my 2c how this can lead to a good XP.

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Doesn’t it also mean that whatever you were listening to yourself, and potentially stopped as you got company, is now playing in the speakers for everyone in the car just as you’re turning it the engine on and can also reach the stop button so fast?

I have experienced this with NWA's "Gangsta Gangsta". Another delightful thing is that the volume is system volume * speaker volume, so that if you turned up the system volume because you were, e.g., using a quiet pair of headphones, this is now blairing at a total unreasonable volume, perhaps even destroying your car's speakers.

This can include that porn you were watching in your mobile browser the night before. Ya know, theoretically.

> …since I'm an Apple Music user, whenever I start the car, it just defaults to whatever's I've been listening to there… […] Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice a.k.a. Spotify" is questionable…

As you noted, it continues playing whatever you were playing in whatever app you were using, with no preference for Apple Music (I'm also a Music subscriber). If you were playing something with Spotify, that's what will continue to play.

I do wish it were configurable with contextual defaults. Too often, I start my car and my sleep sounds app continues to play "Airplane Interior".

Too often I start my car and it begins playing a podcast where I left off. With my kids in the car. I listen to a decent amount of stuff that isn't necessarily appropriate for kids. Makes for a fun scramble to hit that pause button.

And that pause button is never visible by default in CarPlay. Ya gotta hit the menu button in the bottom left a couple times.

you can set up shortcuts to automatically start playing something. I've got one that changes to music and maxes the audio volume when it connects to my car.

My car (mazda 3) does this where it just sends the play command as soon as the phone (pixel) connects. But it just continues playing whatever I was last listening to, so it's always something different. Kinda nice.

My fathers android does the same thing with YouTube music

> Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice

I think this should be obvious, they want you further into the ecosystem.

If every morning when you get into your car your iPhone starts playing Apple Music, you're more likely to switch to Apple Music for all of your listening than to get another phone.

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