You’ll finally be able to control your AM/FM radio through CarPlay thanks to Gracenote

Finally AM/FM radio will be controllable through CarPlay’s native interface thanks to a new app from music-tagging database Gracenote.

One of my biggest gripes with CarPlay is that you frequently have to switch between the CarPlay interface, and your vehicles. If you want to listen to AM/FM radio instead of one of your iPhone’s music streaming apps, you have to exit CarPlay, and use the (often poorly designed) radio interface your car manufacturer has provided.

Previewed at CES, Gracenote showed off its solution to this problem.

A rich interface displayed right within CarPlay to control your radio

Other than playing your local stations, you can choose from a list of favorites, browse based on location or genre, and it combines streaming and broadcast into a single app.

Personally, that sounds pretty outstanding, but it does have one rather significant downside. To make it happen, Gracenote is driving its tech to its partners, such as automakers. Therefore it is up to then to actually implement the solution and release it as an update to their system and make it compatible with CarPlay.

Fingers crossed automakers jump on board and we see real radio control in CarPlay in the not-too-distant future.

Image: CNET