After a clean install my iPhone 5 last week, I notice that every time I plug in my iPhone 5 to my Vios, the in-car entertainment system doesn’t show any information that I’m playing on my iPhone to the dashboard. I can’t skip track (and skip ads ;-p) and the message “No Songs” sometime “Error” message would show up. It’s annoying.

Actually, the message “No Songs” gives the clue away as to why I’m having the problem. You see, the Music app for iPhone (iPod) will usually start playing the first song in alphabetical order every time you connect your iPhone to the in-car entertainment system. When the app can’t find the song thus the message “No Songs”.

This default behavior of the Music app give us another problem; no other third party app can bypass the iPod function. Which means, you must set up your Music app and agree to the T&C of Music app/iPod or whatever it is that Apple want you to agree. Whether Apple purposely did this or not I’m not sure, but it’s a good way to get your attention to use the Music app and have every song in alphabetical order play every time you connect your iPhone to the in-car entertainment system.

I set up my Music app and the free U2 song, Volcano was automatically downloaded to my iPhone and that was the song keep playing every time I connect my iPhone to my in-car entertainment system.

The good news is, I can now play my favorite podcast on Overcast and see the information displayed on in-car entertainment system.

Update 20th Nov 2015

I have since had enough experience with iOS 9 that I am sure that 99% of the time that your iPod doesn’t work with your in-car entertainment system was due to iCloud sign in. Please sign in to your iCloud account every time you reboot your iPhone/iPad.