Description
Seeing CarPlay on a computer, or turning a spare tablet or wall panel into a head unit, usually means buying an adapter box or wrestling with an Android car stereo. PlayPort takes another route: a Mac plays the car side of CarPlay, the iPhone pairs over Bluetooth and then moves to Wi-Fi, and any browser on the network can open a URL to watch and control CarPlay, with no app to install and no hardware dongle.
A Kotlin server on the Mac poses as a head unit to the iPhone: it advertises over Bonjour, authenticates with an MFi identity, and receives the encrypted H.264 or HEVC screen and audio. The neat part is that the server never decodes or re-encodes; it hands the encoded media straight to the browser, which decodes it with WebCodecs onto a canvas, keeping latency and load low. Touch, knob, media keys, Siri and phone calls all work, and several browsers can watch at once. Mind that it is experimental, you must bring your own legitimate accessory identity files, and it needs macOS 13 or later.
Wireless CarPlay:Bluetooth bootstrap plus Wi-Fi handoff, and the phone is re-invited automatically if the link drops.
Any browser is the screen:A laptop, tablet or wall panel will do, with multiple viewers at once.
Touch and knob input:Up to two touch contacts, the keyboard as a rotary knob, and toolbar buttons for Home, Back, Select, media and Siri.
Calls and Siri:When the phone wants voice, the browser asks for the microphone and streams audio back.
Display control:Change resolution, orientation, frame rate, UI size and H.264 or HEVC live, with presets from 800x480 to 4K and a 1:1 match to your window's physical pixels.
Audio mixer:A master level plus separate volumes for media, navigation, Siri and calls.
Runs locally:No cloud and no account; everything stays on your Mac and your LAN.
A Kotlin server on the Mac poses as a head unit to the iPhone: it advertises over Bonjour, authenticates with an MFi identity, and receives the encrypted H.264 or HEVC screen and audio. The neat part is that the server never decodes or re-encodes; it hands the encoded media straight to the browser, which decodes it with WebCodecs onto a canvas, keeping latency and load low. Touch, knob, media keys, Siri and phone calls all work, and several browsers can watch at once. Mind that it is experimental, you must bring your own legitimate accessory identity files, and it needs macOS 13 or later.
Features
Wireless CarPlay:Bluetooth bootstrap plus Wi-Fi handoff, and the phone is re-invited automatically if the link drops.
Any browser is the screen:A laptop, tablet or wall panel will do, with multiple viewers at once.
Touch and knob input:Up to two touch contacts, the keyboard as a rotary knob, and toolbar buttons for Home, Back, Select, media and Siri.
Calls and Siri:When the phone wants voice, the browser asks for the microphone and streams audio back.
Display control:Change resolution, orientation, frame rate, UI size and H.264 or HEVC live, with presets from 800x480 to 4K and a 1:1 match to your window's physical pixels.
Audio mixer:A master level plus separate volumes for media, navigation, Siri and calls.
Runs locally:No cloud and no account; everything stays on your Mac and your LAN.
