Apple Carplay on a MAC!

CarPlay has been around for years, but until now, Apple hasn't offered anything for developers to test their apps, other than buying a car with a compatible car stereo which is a real investment. However, developer Steve Troughton-Smith pointed out that the company recently added a CarPlay simulator to the developer app called Xcode that allows you to test the system, which allows you to remember to project a simplified version of the iOS vehicle dashboard. Now, instead of buying a car, developers will be able to simply buy a MAC or just keep working on it.

With this emulator, which is available in beta and which Apple didn't mention, you can display a rendering of the CarPlay display on your Mac screen. Compared to hardware testing, this allows you to work on a computer and, more importantly, makes testing easier, especially when it comes to screen size and proportions.

The emulator works with an iPhone physically connected to a computer, which then streams CarPlay. And what says physically, necessarily says connecting the iPhone via USB or Lightning port. The Cupertino firm also provides virtual controls to simulate the operation of the car, and like the iOS simulator of Xcode, you can also simulate touch gestures with the trackpad to simulate the latest pad in vehicles such as Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, and many others.

To use it, you not only need to have Xcode 13.2 or higher installed, but also download the additional tools for this version. This means that if you're not a developer in the field, it's of little use to you. Getting started obviously requires an Apple account, not necessarily a paid account. After downloading these tools, you will find the "CarPlay Simulator" application in the "Hardware" folder, which will be moved to the Applications folder on the Mac. Then you need to connect the iPhone to the Mac and the CarPlay interface should appear automatically.

To recap, the ability to launch Carplay for testing on your MAC is a major breakthrough for developers since the native Carplay application will launch at home and not in a vehicle. Note however that Carplay on Mac remains in Beta version for the moment and will most likely be updated to a stable and definitive version for the greatest pleasure of developers working on the development of Apple Carplay compatible applications.