Honda and Acura are expanding their focus on CarPlay by bringing support for smart garage door openers to their respective CarPlay apps.
Currently, CarPlay integrates with HomeKit to present garage door information and control options. What this new Honda and Acura feature does, however, is bring even non-HomeKit compatible smart garage doors to CarPlay.
To do this, Honda is teaming up with Chamberlain Group’s myQ Connected Garage service. While there are dedicated HomeKit garage door accessories on the market, Autoblog points out that the integration with MyQ means that a lot of people will be able to take advantage of this new feature without having to buy any additional hardware.
For this tech to work, Honda says that you’ll need a compatible garage door opener, but there’s a good chance you already do because myQ is compatible with most openers on the market today from LiftMaster and other Chamberlain brands. If your opener is already myQ enabled, then you won’t need to do anything.
However, if you have an older style, Honda says you can use a “myQ Smart Garage Control device” to upgrade it into one. Honda is offering everybody one for free if you sign up for its 30-day demo subscription of the service, so don’t worry about having to buy one.
But if your current garage door hardware isn’t compatible with MyQ, Honda will give you the “myQ Smart Garage Control device” for free. You’ll just have to sign up for the 30-day trial of Honda’s smart services subscription. After that trial, the subscription costs $129 for three years or $179 for five years.
The garage door features are managed through the CarPlay apps for HondaLink and AcuraLink, both of which are available via the App Store. Most notably, you can set up a geofence that will intelligently show you a notification via CarPlay to open or close your garage door based on your current location.
You can also manually use the HondaLink or AcuraLink app via CarPlay to open or close your garage door.
As for compatibility, Honda says that all of its 2023 and 2024 cars support the new CarPlay feature. The company also says that “millions of older Honda and Acura models” with CarPlay will also support the feature, but more details here are unclear for now.
You can download the latest versions of the HondaLink and AcuraLink apps from the App Store to learn more and set up the new CarPlay features.
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