Learn what to do if music starts playing automatically through your car’s speaker when you get in the car with your iPhone.
In most cases, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, or other media app may start playing automatically via your iPhone in your car if you were using one of these music apps a while back, and when you started your car, its Bluetooth or wireless CarPlay auto-connected to your iPhone and resumed the playback.
It can also happen that you or someone with access to your iPhone previously set up a custom automation that plays your favorite music when you connect to the car via Bluetooth or CarPlay. In this case, just turn off or delete the automation.
Stop music from automatically playing when you get in the car
You’ll need to build a simple automation that pauses media when your iPhone connects/auto-connects to your car’s Bluetooth.
1) Open the Shortcuts app and tap Automation.
2) Tap the New Automation button or the plus button (+) to create one.
3) Select Bluetooth from the list of conditions.
4) Tap ‘Choose’ in the Device section and select your car from the list. Your car’s Bluetooth will only appear here if you have previously connected your iPhone to it. Of course, since music playback starts automatically, it’s almost certain that you were previously connected.
5) Leave ‘Is Connected’ checked and ‘Is Disconnected’ unchecked. Then, tap Run Immediately so this automation can work without your approval, and tap Next.
6) Tap Create New Shortcut.
7) Use the Search Actions box to find and add the ‘Play/Pause’ action, which will work for all media apps.
8) Tap ‘Play/Pause’ and set it to Pause. In case this doesn’t work for you, edit the automation later and change ‘Pause’ to ‘Play/Pause.’
9) Finally, tap the checkmark icon to save your automation.
From now on, when your iPhone auto-connects to your car’s Bluetooth system, any media playback that may start automatically will pause instantly, without you having to do it manually.
If music auto-plays because of CarPlay
If your car has wireless CarPlay and it auto-connects to your iPhone and starts playing music, follow the same 9 steps explained above, but in step 3, select CarPlay instead of Bluetooth.
You can even have both Bluetooth and CarPlay automations to be on the safe side.
If music still plays automatically in your car
In this case, check your car’s media settings to see if music or radio plays automatically at ignition. Turn off settings named similarly to Autoplay music, Autoplay radio, Resume media playback, and so on.
If I manually go to my car’s radio (FM/AM) section even once, it remembers my preference and automatically starts playing the radio the next time I start my car. I don’t like this, and unfortunately, there is no setting in my car’s infotainment system to stop this behavior. But I have noticed that if I use Bluetooth or CarPlay a few times after starting my car, it seems to recalibrate my preference and no longer auto-play the radio.
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