Ease the seat back and watch some video in your car with next Apple CarPlay

Apple is enabling video playback on its CarPlay automotive operating system and has integrated it into iOS 26, as long as you're parked.

CarPlay, which is now on more than 800 vehicle models, has never allowed streaming video for the perfectly understandable reason that this might fall afoul of regulators. Plenty of states have distracted driving laws that prohibit watching video in the line of sight of a driver, such as Vehicle Code Section 27602 in Apple's home state of California.

A CarPlay-enabled app called Sidecar briefly offered a $10-a-month service for users to browse the web and watch web-based video directly on the car's dash screen, alongside other features such as navigation functions and analyzing on-board diagnostics. But Apple asked the developer to yank service almost immediately.

Now, Apple has its own version of video playback coming soon with the Cupertino seal of approval. It will ...