Ok, so CarPlay has been working very well since October when I picked up my new 2018 JCW Countryman with my iPhone 7+ running the latest iOS (11.2.5 as of this post). I primarily use the phone, messaging app and a 3rd party app iheartradio for music. All have been working without issue until the last month or so. iheartradio started having issues connecting to my phone. It would start out by trying to pull up the stations list and then time out saying "Try Again". Sometimes the try again would work, others not. Now, even if it does connect to my phone and bring up the stations list, as soon as I hit the play button on the touchscreen the app locks up on CarPlay and I can no longer use the touchscreen with that app. I can still control it via my phone or even my Apple Watch, just not the app on CarPlay. Further still, the touchscreen is only "locked up" on that app itself. All of the other first party apps like messaging, phone, apple music, etc, work just fine. Even more, I installed Spotify to see if that would behave any differently and when iheartradio locks up I am unable to switch to Spotify. When I go back to the home screen after iheartradio locks up and then hit the Spotify app, it brings back up the frozen iheartradio app instead.

I stopped by the dealer and they said that maybe my iDrive needed to be reset. Not sure on that because everything outside of CarPlay works fine and everything first party inside of CarPlay works fine.

Here is the troubleshooting I have done so far:

1) Uninstalled the iheartradio app from my phone and reinstalled it.
2) Cold rebooted my phone using the volume down + power button hold for 10+ seconds.
3) Deleted the car from my phone and set it up as a new CarPlay device.

One interesting note is that even after deleting the iheartradio app from my phone, cold rebooting it, deleting the CarPlay connection and reconnecting it and then reinstalling the iheartradio app on my phone, as soon as I launched iheartradio on CarPlay it came up to the frozen screen it had locked up on prior to doing the steps listed above. Not sure how that is possible because I thought it was just supposed to mirror the app from the phone but it looks like it must keep some kind of profile on the head unit as well that doesn't get wiped when you uninstall/reinstall the app on the phone.

The only thing I have yet to do is redo my entire iPhone 7+, which I really do not want to do unless I absolutely have to.

Any suggestions? It doesn't appear that there is a way to "reboot" the head unit. I tried holding the phower button for 30+ seconds and it did nothing. Is there any way to do so? What else can I try? Anyone else experiencing this same thing?

Thanks,
Gabriel

 

Make the dealer figure it out. That is what you paid them for when you bought the car. Make them research and then come up with a reason why it won't work.

That's my best advice as the tech involved is way beyond my comprehension.

 

Every way I tried, I found CarPlay to be an annoying PIA. I deactivated it, and just use iDrive. Incidentally, iHeartRadio works great in iDrive, but TuneIn does not, and has to be launched manually. I also use the TuneIn alternatives, Simple Radio and MyTuner Radio, but these last two are not supported by MINI Connected. If only they were, as they seem more stable than TuneIn and you can literally play ANY streaming station with them, unlike with TuneIn, and certainly iHeartRadio (which is massively curated). I wish BMW gave us more internet radio app choices. I mean, why not?!