Apple granted patent for ‘Application Shortcuts for CarPlay’

Apple has been granted a patent (number US 11816325 B2) for “Application Shortcuts for CarPlay.”

About the patent

CarPlay is Apple’s tech that allows a car radio or head unit to be a display and controller for iPhones (model 5 and later) running iOS 7.1 or later. 

In the new patent, Apple says that user interfaces on CarPlay may provide a large number of application launch icons. However, in some cases it is difficult to navigate to a desired app launch icon.

Apple’s patent involves a technique that provides electronic devices that support CarPlay with faster, more efficient methods and interfaces for providing shortcut access to applications. Such methods and interfaces optionally complement or replace other methods for application shortcuts, according to the tech giant.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “The present disclosure generally relates to replacing an application affordance corresponding to an application with a different application affordance corresponding to a different application when the different application meets a predetermined criteria.”