2017 GTI - CarPlay audio not working intermittently

[robo_remy]

I've had an ongoing issue with the stock infotainment system in my '17 GTI with regards to Apple CarPlay.

About one out of every five times I plug in a phone to play audio via CarPlay, it shows that the song is playing but the audio is stuck at zero. Also no navigation audio or message notifications. Adjusting the audio via the toggles on the steering wheel or the dial shows the audio popup at the top of the screen, but no bar for the audio. This is remedied by unplugging the phone, holding down the power button to reset, and then plugging the phone back in... at which point it works.

Another interesting tidbit, this error happens every time the car is fully powered on with a phone already attached via the USB (such as leaving the phone plugged in for a quick gas stop or grocery store run). Otherwise it seems truly random, but I have a slight hunch that it may be correlated to the phone being plugged in when the car (and infotainment system) was last powered off.

This has been an ongoing issue through multiple versions of CarPlay. My dealer seemed clueless about it on a recent visit. Is there possibly a firmware update for the infotainment system that could fix this, or any other insights from the forum?

Thanks!

 

[KevinC]

Have you tried a different cable? Is the one you're using MFI-certified, or a cheap knockoff (some of which are certified but still janky)?

 

[mr-fix]

Not sure which system you have, as there are 3:
MIB2 Discover Pro by Harman
MIB2 Discover Media by Delphi
MIB2 Discvoer Media by Technisat

Each can be updated almost the same way. The only difference is the firmware that you need to use, since each system is using different one. Here's an update procedure which I recently filmed in my MK7 with Technisat, going from 0245 to 0254.

 

[Boje]

I have the same occasional issue in my 2018 R, although I'm using a wireless carplay adapter. It happens to me quite rarely, but it's frustrating. I think it happens when the car thinks there is audio already coming out of the phone at the moment it connects to carplay. I think this because I did a deep dive through all the settings when it happened once, immediately after connecting, and found something in the audio settings that said something along the lines of, 'carplay audio will resume when the phone call / audio announcement has ended'.

Going from memory here, but I found the quickest way to clear it is to click on 'media' and try and play something there and then click back on 'app' to go back to carplay, and then it'll let you turn the volume back up. I'll try and reproduce it later today in case I got those steps slightly wrong from memory.