Google Meet Is Now Available in CarPlay.
Taking calls while driving has been a thing since the advent of car phones, but tech companies are still finding new and innovative ways to make it impossible to miss meetings. While CarPlay and Android Auto have built-in traditional phone calling and support some other calling apps, Google Meet has never been supported. If you need to join a work call while in the car, you’ll either have to go through the potentially awkward steps of disconnecting your phone from the car and playing the conversation through the phone itself, or, if possible, have someone else drive while you dial.
Now things are changing—at least for those of us with iPhones. On Thursday, Google announced that Google Meet is now available in CarPlay. Of course, this integration means you can now take work calls while driving (audio only, of course), but Google Meet in CarPlay also has some additional features. According to Google, you’ll be able to view your upcoming schedule in the app and join meetings by tapping them. This is obviously useful when trying to join specific meetings, but like many CarPlay apps, I wonder if it’s too feature-heavy for an app designed for driving.
Google Meet is now available for drivers, though Google insists there will be no video calling. When connecting an iPhone to CarPlay, the camera will be disabled during Google Meet calls, and you won’t be able to see other participants’ video feeds. The company states that this feature is available to all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.
The most notable exception in this user list is Android users. This is another curious case of Google implementing functionality in its iPhone app before the operating system it develops itself. One might expect Android users to get this feature at the same time as iOS, if not earlier, but Google must have a reason. Perhaps there are more Google Meet users on iOS than on Android, but whatever the reason, Android users will have to wait a bit to join work meetings via Android Auto.
Google Meet is the second major CarPlay announcement this week. On Thursday, OpenAI also announced ChatGPT support for CarPlay, following changes in iOS 26.4 that open up support for AI-powered chat apps. When I tested ChatGPT, it immediately showed its full potential.