[guan]

Did the car you rented have a Play/Pause button on the steering wheel? That’s what I am missing the most: being able to quickly pause (and later resume) whatever I’m listening to through CarPlay because I need to pay attention to something that’s happening inside or outside the car. Reading the CarPlay documentation, it seems that it supports such a button, but it’s hard to find a list of cars that have one.

[MBCook]

So on my Mom’s recent Honda we’ve (accidentally) discovered that pressing the volume knob like you would to turn off an old radio plays/pauses what you’re listening to.

Give that a try on any car you look at, you may find it works.

[guan]

Thanks; I’ll double-check but I think pushing the volume button turns the whole infotainment system off. Which does pause whatever’s playing, but also turns off navigation or whatever else I had on the CarPlay screen.

[mmcclure]

I believe the steering wheel had some basic media controls, but honestly I didn't end up using them very much. I found myself using Siri more than usual so I wouldn't need to spend too much time looking at buttons to figure out what they did, but I think I could get used to more buttons if it was my own vehicle and not a short term rental.

[photojosh]

Yes, this is one of my pet peeves too. The steering wheel has volume controls with press-to-mute, then right next to them are forward and back controls... a press on that control would be perfect for play/pause, but alas— no.

[DavidAdams]

My volvo's big central volume control has a large play/pause button in the middle and it works to pause anything that Carplay is playing. There's also a play/pause control on the steering wheel. Overall, my 2016 Volvo does a pretty good job with Carplay integration, though it also has a bunch of native software that mostly sucks in comparison, such as a voice control that I've never been able to use.

[guan]

So it turns out that if you turn the volume all the way down to zero, it pauses playback. And if you turn it up again, it starts playing. I didn’t test whether navigation messages from Maps can still be heard. Not perfect as it takes a few seconds to do when you might need an immediate pause to avoid distraction, but it’s probably good enough for me.