Some users report Apple Music crashes when used with CarPlay and iOS 14.5.1

How to set a wallpaper and change appearance for CarPlay (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore)

What you need to know

Some users are unable to launch Apple Music when using CarPlay on iOS 14.5.1.
Reddit is full of users complaining of the issue.

Crashes aren't the kinds of things you want to hear about when driving a car, but that's what Apple Music users are experiencing when trying to launch the app via CarPlay. The issue seems to only impact those running iOS 14.5.1, too.

A growing number of people have taken to Reddit to report issues for which there doesn't yet appear to be a fix.

The Apple Music App has stopped working on Carplay. When I click on it, it opens then immediately closes and goes back to the home screen. No idea what changed. I made sure everything was update on my iPhone, restarted the phone, and power the car radio on and off. Nothing helped.My phone is an iPhone XR running iOS 14.5.1.

That was just one report, with more than 100 comments following, many of which were reporting the exact same issue. Notably, anyone using their iPhone to select a song should be just fine – it's only when people use the CarPlay interface that things go awry.

Same here. Worked this morning, just went for a drive and thats when I noticed it. I also tried to re-boot the stereo software and did a hard reset on my phone, still nothing. It will play music if I use my phone to pick what I want but will not open the music app at all on the carplay interface.

There doesn't appear to be a fix for this yet, but given the fact it seems to have started after the iOS 14.5.1 update was applied, I'm hopeful this is something Apple can fix without needing to roll another update out.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.