I have had a 2024 GLC since July, no issues with wireless Carplay until I got an IPhone 18 a couple of months ago. I noticed it would occasionally drop Carplay every now and then for a few seconds and reconnect. Now, it won't recognize the device unless I connect to the MBUX hotspot, and that's a very limited fix because I don't have a Wifi plan and it seems like its only using limited cell service - and it impedes other cellular activity.

I've tried forgetting all devices and repairing, and restarting the MBUX system, but nothing helping. I've searched IPhone forums as well and it doesn't seem like any privacy settings are blocking it, but it does seem like it's a phone issue based on the timing. Any advice appreciates.

The iPhone 18 isn't coming out for another two years. I'm guessing you mean iOS 18 and iPhone 16. I recently got an new iPhone 16 Pro myself and haven't had any wireless or wired CarPlay issues. iOS 18 was a bit buggy at the beginning, but in the meantime they fixed a lot of the initial issues. Are you running the latest iOS 18.3? If not, first step would be to upgrade to the latest version. Are you using private Wi-Fi addresses, VPN or anything? If so, turn that off. You can also try to reset the network settings on the phone. If that doesn't help, you may need to factory reset the phone. There are some reports of people having CarPlay trouble with iOS 18, but they seem to be unique to particular installations rather than common issues.

Yes, thanks, I edited title. Yes, 18.3, No VPN. Will try the others, thanks.

We have the same problem with our iPhone 15 and iOS18. Carplay will drop - the screen will go blank like its resetting and then its 50/50 where or not the CarPlay icon appears so you can use it again. Start/Stop will fix the problem - very annoying when taking a long drive and your Waze turns off.............

Nothing works so far. Oddly, my phone works in our other car, and our other iphones work in my car, so the plot thickens.

So just to add despite what I said above that I don't have any issues, I need to go back to earlier experiences. I've been having similar issues in many loaners I've been driving with the new large center screen MBUX system over the last two years. It would drop the CarPlay connection frequently or MBUX would even crash. I read somewhere online a post from somebody who had the same issue, and they said it only happens when streaming music from the phone over CarPlay. I was indeed listening to Pandora every time I had these issues, so I stopped streaming music while using CarPlay and lo and behold the disconnects and crashes stopped. Now whenever I drive one of these newer models, I listen to the radio while using CarPlay and the connection has been stable. I had forgotten about this until now. The sad story is that MBUX is still kind of a buggy mess. My current car has COMAND NTG 5.5 and everything is pretty much stable, but MBUX has been buggy ever since it was released. They've pushed out several updates, but there still seem to be bugs that haven't been fixed.

So, I seem to have found the issue. I was trying to figure out what was different during the past week, and I remembered i had turned on the AI feature.
I turned the feature off, forgot the phone from MBUX< turned off the phone, restarted MBUX and the phone, paired it back - and there was CarPlay.
May have something to do with the fact that i didn't initiate AI when I first got the phone - but who knows!

I don't think it has anything to do with Apple Intelligence. AI wasn't available when iOS 18 came out first, so I paired my phone w/o it. I enabled it later, but then disabled it again because it was buggy, then enabled it with 18.2.1 again as it was getting better. With 18.3 it now gets automatically enabled, but you can disabled it. Possibly restarting the phone had something to do with it.