Apple CarPlay activation

[Vitor Hugo mendes]

Hey guys I have successfully activated CarPlay on my audi, is it just here (Denmark) where the cars before 2019 are commonly missing that function? and it is pretty complicated to figure it out on your own

 

[MitchH]

Hey guys I have successfully activated CarPlay on my audi, is it just here (Denmark) where the cars before 2019 are commonly missing that function? and it is pretty complicated to figure it out on your ownView attachment 72

Tell us how you did this!

 

[Vitor Hugo mendes]

Tell us how you did this!

Ok, so after a lot of searching and realizing no one had done this in an oem way on a a3, they mostly go for the Chinese boxes! I start researching solely about how to activate it on my specific unit! MIB2, it works on a few others ! I will make a step by step down here with all the links and information!

CAR PLAY ACTIVATION AUDI MMI MIB2 MHIG (MIB1 High) and MHI2/MHI2Q (MIB2 High) units only.
Items:
sd car (at least 8gb)
if your audi has the charge only usb you are going to need:
usb harness: (the link below is for the golf vii usb but it still works, you can look for the audi one but its harder to find, and usually more expensive)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...p_id=20250108082823673345279852680021613547_1
PROCESS:
if your car has a usb with data transfer then you can skip this part!
Hardware:
Remove the mmi unit ( the one usually in the glove box; u need special tools for that: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...0E1OWqJp&utparam-url=scene:search|query_from: )
plug the new harness.
then you got some options:
medium 1- buy a wireless CarPlay adapter plugin to the new usb and hide somewhere inside the glove box (you will need to remove the glove box for this)
easier 2- leave the new usb inside the glove box, or pass the cables to the back and have it hanging on the passengers footwell
harder 3- strip the whole interior and have the cable in the central arm rest, in the original spot
after you have installed a working usb port is time for software
you are going to have to install onto a sd card a software called more incredible bash (MIB) here is the YouTube tutorial on how to do it:

then you need to run the patch aio (all in one)
then you should have it running

fairly simple process but not widely talked about! I found the way through some very forums going from one forum to another and none of those forums come up on the first pages when you google about it

 

[3tron]

I performed this successfully on my '17 A3 as well. Some things to keep in mind:

1. This only works on certain versions of Harman MMI hardware and, as pointed out above, only if your USB connections have data (if you can play music via wired USB to your unit in addition to Bluetooth, then you should be good).

For completeness, the back of the MMI will look as follows (the green roundish connector toward the left is the USB data+power going to the front and center consoles):



The above is true for certain model Audis which did not have the CarPlay feature enabled from the factory but otherwise had all of the requisite HW and SW. Some forums indicate that it was the early model year builds of particular model years that had this issue. It's not the same year for all models, but it was early build '17s for the A3 in the US (i.e. 2016 build date). As far as I can tell, dealers have no clue on how to do this officially because it seems that you should be able to purchase a "feature pack" of sorts from Audi that enables this officially. Anyway, I couldn't, so I went with MIB...

2. Check out the M.I.B. link: https://github.com/Mr-MIBonk/M.I.B._More-Incredible-Bash. You want to read this a few times to familiarize yourself with the procedure. The trick is that once you are able to find everything on mibsolution.one, the patches only work on specific, official MMI SW/FW build trains. So, if your MMI isn't on one of their supported builds, you will first have to upgrade your MMI build via the same SD procedure, which has more caveats and requirements like disconnecting the B&O amp link. I didn't have to do this part, and this is documented well enough on other forums if you look. So, the takeaway is that you might have more steps to go through:
1) MMI SW update
2) Install MIB/Patch to enable the green engineering menu (GEM)
3) Invoke GEM/MIB to apply the "fixes" that enable the fun stuff

3. When you run any of it, wait for all steps to complete. The screen control is asynchronous and doesn't necessarily scroll with progress (at least mine didn't). But you can freely move the MMI screen up and down to watch for screen updates and only move to the next step once the current step is clearly complete. Luckily, it is smart enough to catch you doing the wrong thing (like it did with me, due to my impatience). The process may take up to an hour start to finish.

4. 4GB is the smallest size SD you need. I formatted mine to FAT32/4KB per instructions but may not be strictly necessary. I also used a full size SD card though I thought I saw them use a micro with an adapter in one of their videos.

Combined with a wireless CarPlay adapter, it performs nearly flawlessly! It's well worth the effort to undo Audi's silliness.

Good luck!