Here’s what Apple’s CarPlay 2 looks like, according to leaked screenshots

• New screenshots of Apple’s CarPlay 2 have just surfaced online
• They purport to show widgets designed for Apple’s car dashboard system
• CarPlay 2 has seemingly been delayed and lacks a release date

CarPlay is Apple’s digital system for interacting with your car – listening to music, using maps, that sort of thing. And the company has been teasing CarPlay 2 for what seems like forever, all with very little to show for it. Now, though, it looks like we’ve just been given a glimpse of how it will work, including a set of widgets that will give you all sorts of abilities from your dashboard.

The leaked images were posted by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris on X. There, Perris uploaded four shots of a rectangular dashboard populated with various widgets. All of the images were monochrome, but it’s likely that the final CarPlay 2 release will feature much more color.

The first image displayed a large, empty rectangle that can be populated with widgets. Some of those widgets were shown in the second picture, which depicted square widgets for the Clock, Weather, and Calendar apps. Perris also showed a widget for a combined navigation and music display next to a standalone music player.

Despite that, Perris didn’t reveal where these images came from or provide any more information on what we can expect from CarPlay 2, leaving us with plenty of questions to answer.

Where is CarPlay 2?

CarPlay 2 has had a long, bumpy road since it was first announced. Apple teased it at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2022, saying it would release the updated system before too long. Yet there’s been nothing but radio silence since then.

In fact, Apple’s CarPlay website still says that the first models featuring CarPlay 2 will “arrive in 2024.” Clearly, that’s not going to happen anymore.

One reason for the delay could be that CarPlay 2 is not the same plug-and-play outfit as the original CarPlay was. The first edition of the car dashboard system uses the same rectangular layout in every car, making it easy for vehicle manufacturers to include it. CarPlay 2, on the other hand, promises a complete dashboard takeover, which means that Apple has to work directly with each carmaker to weave it into their unique layouts. That has likely, at least partially, caused the delay with the rollout.

The revelation of the new CarPlay 2 screenshots should give Apple fans some hope that work is progressing well. But without any word from Apple, there’s no way of knowing when it will finally make its long-awaited and much anticipated arrival.

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he’s learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That’s all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.