Apple CarPlay's getting a new look you can match to your car

There are a number of changes coming to Apple CarPlay, including widgets and Live Activities, which will all land with iOS 26. There's another little detail that just appeared in the iOS 26 beta too, hinting at another change for CarPlay users.

In iOS 26 beta 4 – one of the developer versions before we get to the public beta – new wallpapers have been added.

Apple CarPlay has given you the opportunity to change the wallpapers since iOS 14, with the company's own selection. However, there's been a refresh of the options in iOS 26, with dark and light versions – giving you a wider choice.

According to 9to5Mac there will be nine new wallpapers, with each having a dark and light version. There are also two styles, which are based on iPhone wallpaper and solid dark colours.

Sadly though, while new options have been added, older versions have been taken away. So if there was a particular version you were using, you might now lose that old favourite.

Apple doesn't let you customise the wallpaper to your own preference yet – although neither does Android Auto. The Google equivalent will let you share your phone's wallpaper with the car's display, or have a plain black background, but neither option is particularly friendly.

The customisation of wallpaper might be a moot point, because most of the time that you're driving you'll have larger and more useful views open, like your mapping application, rather than just looking at the grid of icons with a wallpaper behind.

But that could change. Ever larger displays are appearing in cars, with some windowing Apple CarPlay within the display space. While Apple CarPlay Ultra has been designed with complete re-theming in mind, it seems that we're stuck with a number of limitations in Apple CarPlay for the time being.

The latest version of Apple's software isn't expected to be released until September, but we're expecting the launch of the iOS 26 public beta any day now. This will give those with a compatible iPhone the option to test out some of the new features for themselves.

The normal caveat remains, however, that using beta software could lead to some problems, as it's not complete and things might not work exactly as planned.