Working with CarPlay might be though for various reasons and the recent upgrade to M1 chips only added more problems to the matter. Having to integrate third party libraries within your project that are not build for M1, having to run Xcode on Rosetta and having to support CarPlay is a difficult challenge for every developer nowadays.
Luckily Apple has recently released a standalone CarPlay simulator as a separate app that can natively run on your Mac. Let's see how to set it up and how it works.
Download and Install
At the time of writing, the only way to download the app is through the Apple Developer Portal. Download the Additional Tools for Xcode 13.2, then open the image file and go under the Hardware folder. Move the CarPlay simulator app to your Application directory.
Configuration
There is no official guide on how to configure your iPhone to be ready for the simulator. The only thing you have to make sure of is to turn off your hotspot on your device (if on). When this step is done, connect your device to your Mac and open the simulator. On your iPhone you should see a message from the simulator requiring permissions. Grant them and it will load the CarPlay interface. On the simulator menu, under Devices, you should see your device name with a green icon.
Notes
You can use this simulator for development purposes. When you run an app on debug mode and open the app on the simulator, all your print statements and breakpoints will be triggered.
Top comments (3)
hey @amerigom thanks for that! I wasn't able to run the CarPlay simulator until I saw this. Mine was not working because I had indeed the Personal Hotspot turned on! Turning it off fixed it immediately :)
How do I connect my iPhone to the Mac?
You just need to plug in the iPhone to the Mac through the lightning cable.