rangemaster728
Senior Member
About three years ago I decided to retrofit an android aftermarket unit to my 2020 Ram 1500 Classic.
It has worked well, with no problems and good support for wireless CarPlay for my iPhone.
It looks like after upgrading a while back to iOS 18.x (not sure where in the upgrade path this went awry) I started having problems.
The symptoms look like this:
I use Waze for navigation most of the time, occasionally I would see "using off-line maps ".
I also noticed that when this occurs, I also lose data connectivity for other applications like browsers, security cam apps, etc. on the iPhone. This even occurs an area where I have full signal strength LTE coming into the phone. in order to get the other features to work I have to disable Wi-Fi on the phone, which of course kills wireless CarPlay... this has been very frustrating for me.
After doing a bunch of research I think I may have discovered the cause, and a possible solution.
I believe when you're using wireless CarPlay it uses Bluetooth to establish the initial connection and verification, then uses Wi-Fi to the phone to get all the data for CarPlay, maps, etc.
Something apparently changed in the way a version of iOS 18 handles data and CarPlay.
While I'm still testing this solution it looks like modifying the parameters for the wireless connection to the android head unit may solve the problem.
While connected to the vehicle on wireless CarPlay, in your connected iPhone go to Settings>Wifi and select the active Wi-Fi connection to the head unit. Take a screenshot of the parameters for that connection including Configure IP, IP Address, Subnet Mask and Router data.
Then while the connection is still active go back into those parameters and change Configure IP (which on mine was set to "automatic ") to "manual ", enter IP address and subnet mask matching what you had, and make the router address entry BLANK.... wiping out the router address in this wireless connection configuration appears to be the key.
After you do this restart the head unit and do a soft reset on your iPhone.
This should force the phone to depend on cellular data, not the Wi-Fi connection to the android head unit for all your other applications that need data.
I believe somewhere in the process of upgrading to some version of iOS 18 that some defaults were changed regarding CarPlay and Wi-Fi connection . I'll continue to investigate this but right now it looks like this is the fix.
It has worked well, with no problems and good support for wireless CarPlay for my iPhone.
It looks like after upgrading a while back to iOS 18.x (not sure where in the upgrade path this went awry) I started having problems.
The symptoms look like this:
I use Waze for navigation most of the time, occasionally I would see "using off-line maps ".
I also noticed that when this occurs, I also lose data connectivity for other applications like browsers, security cam apps, etc. on the iPhone. This even occurs an area where I have full signal strength LTE coming into the phone. in order to get the other features to work I have to disable Wi-Fi on the phone, which of course kills wireless CarPlay... this has been very frustrating for me.
After doing a bunch of research I think I may have discovered the cause, and a possible solution.
I believe when you're using wireless CarPlay it uses Bluetooth to establish the initial connection and verification, then uses Wi-Fi to the phone to get all the data for CarPlay, maps, etc.
Something apparently changed in the way a version of iOS 18 handles data and CarPlay.
While I'm still testing this solution it looks like modifying the parameters for the wireless connection to the android head unit may solve the problem.
While connected to the vehicle on wireless CarPlay, in your connected iPhone go to Settings>Wifi and select the active Wi-Fi connection to the head unit. Take a screenshot of the parameters for that connection including Configure IP, IP Address, Subnet Mask and Router data.
Then while the connection is still active go back into those parameters and change Configure IP (which on mine was set to "automatic ") to "manual ", enter IP address and subnet mask matching what you had, and make the router address entry BLANK.... wiping out the router address in this wireless connection configuration appears to be the key.
After you do this restart the head unit and do a soft reset on your iPhone.
This should force the phone to depend on cellular data, not the Wi-Fi connection to the android head unit for all your other applications that need data.
I believe somewhere in the process of upgrading to some version of iOS 18 that some defaults were changed regarding CarPlay and Wi-Fi connection . I'll continue to investigate this but right now it looks like this is the fix.
Last edited:
