Wireless Apple CarPlay on your Windows PC.
Listen to music, use navigation, take calls and talk to Siri through your PC's speakers and microphone. Control CarPlay with your mouse and keyboard.
Useful for building and testing CarPlay apps and navigation without a car, for demos, or just CarPlay on a desk.
- An iPhone with CarPlay.
- A Windows 10 or 11 PC (64-bit) with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi or Ethernet. A USB Bluetooth adapter works if it supports classic Bluetooth, not only Bluetooth Low Energy.
- One router for the PC and the iPhone. Connect the iPhone by Wi-Fi and the PC by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. The network must let devices see each other: most home networks do, guest networks usually don't. It must use WPA2 or no password; WPA3-only networks don't work yet.
With Ethernet, ChairPlay selects a single available adapter automatically and offers a choice when there are several. See Ethernet setup.
- Install. Download the latest
ChairPlay-…-setup.exefrom the Releases page and run it. No administrator rights needed. If Windows SmartScreen warns about an unrecognized app, choose More info → Run anyway. - Pair your iPhone with the PC once, in Windows Settings → Bluetooth & devices, as you would headphones.
- Open ChairPlay. The Get started screen checks the firewall, your paired iPhone, and your network connection. The firewall step is omitted when Windows Firewall is off.
- Connect. When the checks are complete, keep your iPhone unlocked and nearby and press Connect. Accept the CarPlay prompt on the iPhone. CarPlay comes up.
After that, open ChairPlay with your iPhone unlocked and nearby, and CarPlay starts by itself.
A newer installer updates ChairPlay and keeps your settings, pairing and MFi files. Uninstalling asks whether to delete them too.
See the changelog for changes between versions and the 1.0.5 release notes for this update.
- Connection: wireless CarPlay with the PC connected over Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
- Displays: customizable CarPlay layouts and appearance, plus an experimental AltScreen with maps, turn cards, and a HUD for navigation and music. Both screens support H.264/H.265 video with GPU decoding.
- Controls: mouse, keyboard, and on-screen car controls. Type in CarPlay fields and use global shortcuts while another app has focus. See Controls.
- Audio: music, calls, and Siri through your chosen speakers and microphone, with independent volume and buffered music playback.
- Apple Spatial Audio: APAC 5.1 from supported iPhone apps, with surround output or automatic stereo downmix.
- GPS simulation (experimental): set a virtual location and drive with a keyboard or gamepad to test navigation. See the GPS guide.
Settings are in the app and save as you change them. Tested on Windows 11 with an iPhone 15 (iOS 18.6).
Click to touch, use Arrow keys to move the focus, Enter or Space to select, and Backspace or Esc to go back. Press Home for the home screen, F for full screen, or Ctrl+R to reconnect.
All keyboard shortcuts
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| Mouse | touch |
| Arrows | tilt the knob: move the focus |
| Tab / Shift+Tab, mouse wheel | turn the knob |
| Enter, Space | select |
| Backspace, Esc | back |
| Home | home screen |
| Ctrl+R | reconnect |
| S | Siri |
| F3 / F4 | answer / end a call |
| F7 / F8 / F9 | previous track / play or pause / next track |
| F10 | drive the GPS car with the arrows (GPS simulation on) |
| Shift+F10 | large or small gauges for the GPS car |
| F11 | AltScreen: switch between the HUD and the map |
| Shift+F11 | AltScreen: move the arrival time and turn card |
| F12 | save screenshots of CarPlay and the AltScreen |
| F | toggle full screen for the focused CarPlay or AltScreen window |
| Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down / Ctrl+M | ChairPlay's volume up / down / mute |
| Mouse wheel over the AltScreen, + / − | zoom the AltScreen map |
| The car button on the CarPlay home screen | open the settings; the CarPlay button or Esc returns |
ChairPlay is a hobby project I build and test on real hardware in my spare time. It’s free and fully open source under GPL-3.0, and donations are the only way I earn anything from this work. If it saves you a trip to the car, helps you build CarPlay apps, or makes your desk a little more fun, you can buy me a coffee.
- Music uses AAC or, in Buffered mode, APAC for supported spatial content. The Buffer row shows 5.1 or 5.1 → stereo during APAC playback. Playback settings.
- USB CarPlay and hotspots shared by the PC are not supported.
- Close ChairPlay through its window; force-closing an active session may require restarting the iPhone.
- Calls work best with headphones. Speaker echo cancellation is experimental and off by default.
- Adjust volume in ChairPlay or Windows; the iPhone's volume buttons do not control CarPlay.
Open an issue: About → Report a problem fills in the version for you. For a connection problem, set Log level to Info on the Experiments page, try again, and attach the log: the Logs button on that page opens its folder. ChairPlay keeps your Wi-Fi password out of the log, but look it over before sending.
Ideas and fixes are welcome too: open an issue or a pull request, or write to me at alex.strelets@gmail.com.
You need JDK 17; the build downloads the rest.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/NumberOneBot/ChairPlay.git
cd ChairPlay
gradlew deploy
This builds the app into dist\ChairPlay. docs/SETUP.md covers the build, every setting, moving to a newer DiPlay, and the git hooks that keep keys out of commits.
GPL-3.0, like DiPlay and xcertplay; see LICENSE. The CarPlay protocol work builds on LIVI, xcertplay, and DiPlay.
ChairPlay is built on DiPlay by shihabal3amri, a CarPlay receiver for Android car head units, which is based on xcertplay by shilapi. LIVI by f-io provided a foundational CarPlay reference for xcertplay and, through it, DiPlay. ChairPlay is a separate project, not affiliated with their authors.
The HUD's 3D maneuvers and destination flag are LuKa's, from mib2q-carplay-rgi (GPL-3.0 or later); native/maneuver/README.md lists what was taken and changed. APAC support also builds on LuKa's decoder and CarPlay protocol research in that project. The notices of the bundled libraries are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES and come with the app.
CarPlay, iPhone, AirPlay and Siri are trademarks of Apple Inc. ChairPlay is not affiliated with Apple. No Apple MFi identity is stored in this repository.