Is it a dream, that all iPhone owners may one day be able to run all of their handsets apps via Apple‘s in-car CarPlay? Apparently not, because, while many developers have worked on it officially. It’s NGXPlay which works on jailbroken handsets, which has made the breakthrough. But, what’s amazing about this is, if you’re running an iOS 8 to iOS 10 jailbreak on an iPhone, you can do this now.
What Benefits Do iPhone Apps on CarPlay Have?
If you have CarPlay in your ride, then you will now the frustration of having to use two separate libraries of apps. As such, the ability to be able to see your favorite apps on your iPhone, and then pick one to use via CarPlay is amazing. As we mentioned earlier, it’s something Apple itself is working towards.
Now, we’re going to tell you how to do this, but you have to be aware of the following. Doing so, will require you to use Configure & Respring, which will perform a minor reboot of your iPhone. However, the result will allow you to use the apps that “You Want” when Apple’s CarPlay is connected.
Getting And Using NGXPlay
To be able to do what we’re talking about here, you’re of course going to need NGXPlay. You can get it via the BigBoss repo is Cydia, and it costs nothing!
As for using the app itself, we can assure you that it’s extremely straight forward. However, there is the chance, that to get this app to work, its developers had to do significant hacking. As such, and probably for a good reason, they’ve included some important features within NGXPlay. And they are troubleshooting and performance features, ones that will help you keep things ticking over nicely.
These options include Mirror and External modes, each giving you the choice of how to run the app. Here’s how they work:
Mirror Mode rather straightforwardly, this mode enables you to almost screencast what is on your iPhones display to the CarPlay unit. While it has its uses, unfortunately, there is one big drawback, and that is no touch-screen input on the CarPlay dashboard.
External Mode Is the complete opposite of the previous, while again the display contents of the iPhone appear on the dash. The apps and other features can be accessed via the touch screen.
Interesting Features For A Jailbreak App
Like most apps for jailbroken devices, NGXPlay while useful is rather limited in its scope. A such its overall amount of features are small, but, are specifically created to make the Apple CarPlay experience a good one.
Two features worth mentioning are a simple controller for frames-per-second output. Which means that you can precisely control how fast the screen refresh rate is. The higher gives a better resolution, and the lower, well a less detailed image. Next, there’s a fault/issue logging feature, which stores information about any issues. And then allows the user to try and fix them at a later time.
Final Thoughts
Now you may be wondering about exactly which apps will work? Well, we can tell you that so far, we’ve seen reports of Google Maps, YouTube, Waze, Netflix working, and other apps being tested. The developer of the NGXPlay app suggests that almost all apps will work, however, it’s probably best to pick one and check it for yourself.
What you probably shouldn’t do is expect a universal level of performance. Why? Because, as the first iteration of this solution, there will be bugs. Some which will be revealed as performance related and others as instability. So, it’s best that you play around with it, and wait for an update.
