iOS 26 CarPlay Widgets: All 11 Built-In

iOS 26 shipped in June 2025 and brought a change CarPlay hadn't seen in eleven years: it let normal iPhone widgets render on the CarPlay screen. Not just Apple's. Yours. Anybody's. Five slots in a stack, customizable, syncing automatically.

Here's the honest list after months of daily CarPlay widget use: which widgets actually earn a slot, which ones look great in a screenshot and useless in practice, and what's still on the roadmap.

How CarPlay widgets actually work in iOS 26

Three things to know first, because most explainers skip them:

• Five slots, vertical stack. Tap to expand. You can rearrange in iPhone Settings → CarPlay → your car → Widgets. The stack persists per-car.
• Widget source = iPhone widget gallery.Any iPhone widget that meets Apple's accessibility guidelines auto-appears. Developers can also explicitly opt out if their widget isn't suitable for the car.
• The widget runs on iPhone, not on CarPlay. So performance, refresh rate, and data freshness all come from your phone. If your phone is hot, the widgets lag.

The eleven that earned the slot

1. Photos (with album lock)

The first widget I install on every car. Pick an album — kids, dog, last trip — and CarPlay rotates photos every 30 seconds. It's the only one that ever made anyone in the passenger seat say “oh, that's nice.”

Caveat: Apple Photos default behavior is “recommended” album, which gives you whatever the algorithm decides. You want to pick a specific album. Our widget defaults to letting you lock the source; the native one defaults to the algorithm.

2. Weather (route-aware)

Apple's default Weather widget shows current location. Useful if you're parked. If you're driving 200 miles, you want destination weather, not departure-city weather. Pick a widget that supports route-aware location or pin the destination manually.

3. Music Now-Playing

The system widget is fine, but album art covers half the tile. Variants that show track + artist + a thin progress bar work better at 65 mph. Carrot and Marvis Pro both have CarPlay-optimized variants. If you'd rather read the words than the track name, a CarPlay lyrics widget fills the same slot with synced lyrics from Apple Music, Spotify, or Bluetooth audio.

4. Reminders (next-two only)

The default Reminders widget shows three items by default. Two is the right number for a glance. Pin a list you actually use — “Errands” or “Today” — not the catch-all that has 47 things in it.

5. Compass

Sounds dumb until you realize half of older cars don't have one and your in-dash navigation is often just an ETA, not a heading.

6. Calendar Today

Next two events + countdown to next. This is the widget that prevents the “wait, was that meeting at 2 or 3?” phone-grab.

7. Battery (iPhone + accessories)

Especially relevant if you wear AirPods. You glance, see 18%, switch them in the cup holder for the backup pair. Done.

8. Speedometer (GPS-based)

Your dashboard speedometer is often off by 2-5 mph. GPS-based readouts are more accurate. Useful if you drive a rental and don't trust the cluster. Our guide to getting a speedometer on CarPlaycovers adding this widget and how it compares to Waze and your car's own dash.

9. AQI / Air Quality

For anyone with allergies, asthma, or living anywhere wildfire-prone. CarPlay AQI widget tells you when to flip recirculate-air on without thinking about it.

10. Sports score

The Apple Sports app got a CarPlay widget in iOS 26.2. If you follow a team, this earns its slot. If you don't, skip.

11. Custom Note

One line of text you pin. Hotel address. Gate code. Parking spot. The thing you don't want to unlock your phone to read.

The album-lock trick

Want the Photos widget to show your album, not the algorithm's pick?

Car Play Connect ships 11 purpose-built CarPlay widget templates, including a Photos tile you lock to one album — kids, dog, last trip — instead of the recommended-album algorithm.

Car Play Connect: Auto Sync

4.6·2,300+ ratings·Free to try

Download on theApp Store

Point your camera to install

The three that don't earn the slot

Calendar Month View. Looks great in screenshots. Unreadable at 60 mph. Skip in favor of Calendar Today.

Stocks.Unless you're actively day-trading from the driver's seat (please don't), this is marketing-photo bait. Glance value = zero.

ChatGPT / AI chatbot widgets.Apple added these in iOS 26.2. The use case in the car is voice-only — Siri or the chatbot's own voice mode. A widget that lets you tap to start a conversation is taking up a slot a real glance widget could use.

What's still on the iOS 26 roadmap

• No per-car widget profiles. If you drive two cars, the stack syncs across both. There's no “work car” vs “weekend car” setting yet.
• Refresh rates vary wildly. Weather updates every few minutes, the photo widget every 30 seconds, third-party widgets sometimes not at all unless the app is in foreground.
• No widget for in-progress trips. If you start navigation, there's no “next turn in 0.3 mi” widget — that lives in the Maps app proper.

Beyond the stock stack

Want more than Apple's stock CarPlay widgets?

iOS gives you five widget slots and one shared stack; Car Play Connect fills them with 11 purpose-built templates — album-locked Photos, a GPS speedometer, weather and calendar — plus a custom startup sound.

Car Play Connect: Auto Sync

Free to try

Download on theApp Store

Point your camera to install

Setting it up in 60 seconds

1. iPhone Settings → CarPlay → tap your car name.
2. Customize → Widgets.
3. Drag in the ones you want. Order matters — top of stack shows first.
4. For each widget, tap the gear icon to set source (album for Photos, list for Reminders, location for Weather).
5. Connect to CarPlay. Stack appears in the right pane.

The iOS 26 widget shortlist at a glance

You only get five slots, so glance value is everything. Here's the shortlist of built-in tiles that earns a slot — and the ones that look great in a screenshot but waste one at 60 mph. If you're shopping for third-party widget apps beyond Apple's built-in set, our best CarPlay widgets roundup ranks the ten that survived eight weeks of testing.

FAQ

Why are my CarPlay widgets not loading?

Widgets render on the iPhone and stream to the car screen, so when they go blank the phone is almost always the culprit — Low Power Mode, an overheated iPhone, or iOS purging the widget process in the background. Toggle the widget stack off and on in Settings → General → CarPlay → your car → Widgets, then reconnect. If the stack is still empty after an iOS update, re-adding each widget once fixes the registration. Our CarPlay widgets not loading guide walks through all six fixes in order.

Are Apple CarPlay widgets the same as iPhone widgets?

Same framework, different filter. Any iPhone widget that meets Apple's glanceability rules can appear on CarPlay in iOS 26, but developers can opt out, and interactive widgets lose their buttons in the car. That's why your iPhone widget gallery shows more options than the CarPlay picker does.

How many widgets can CarPlay show in iOS 26?

Five slots, arranged in a vertical stack in the CarPlay dashboard pane. The top slot is what you see first — order them by glance value, not by how pretty they look in Settings.

One more thing

If your car doesn't support CarPlay — Tesla, most pre-2016 vehicles, motorcycles — you can still get the same five-widget experience on your iPhone in Mount Mode. Same idea, same templates, runs on the phone in a car mount.