Verse

Personal media player for iPhone (17e, iOS 26). Sideload-only. Plays anything, shows synced lyrics, streams YouTube ad-free, and puts all of it on the CarPlay Now Playing screen.

Read this before you write any code

CarPlay video exists since iOS 26, with three hard constraints. "AirPlay video in the car" lets any app that supports AirPlay video streaming play video on the CarPlay display. The constraints, all enforced by the system: (1) parked only — driving stops playback; (2) the car must support the feature (an MFi capability automakers opt into — factory support is still nearly nonexistent as of mid-2026); (3) the media must go through AVPlayer external playback — VLC decodes locally and can never AirPlay video. Sources/Core/AirPlayVideo.swift is that path: AVPlayer-compatible content (mp4/mov/HLS, incl. every extracted YouTube stream) routes there so the AirPlay picker can offer the car; everything else stays on VLC, phone only.

iOS 27 adds a proper CarPlay video app entitlement (browse UI on the car screen, parked playback). It requires Apple approving your app — plausible for Netflix, not for a sideloaded personal YouTube player. File at https://developer.apple.com/contact/carplay/ if you want to try; build nothing that depends on it.

CarPlay browse UI for audio also needs an entitlement (com.apple.developer.carplay-audio), same approval path. Assume it is not coming.

If the car doesn't support AirPlay video in the car (today: almost all of them), no app code helps. The working fallbacks are hardware: an Android "AI box" in the CarPlay USB port, or an aftermarket head unit that supports the feature.

What works with no entitlement at all: any iOS app that plays audio, configures AVAudioSession(.playback), and populates MPNowPlayingInfoCenter + MPRemoteCommandCenter appears on the CarPlay Now Playing screen automatically. Transport controls, scrubber, metadata, and artwork all work. That is the entire CarPlay surface for this project, and it is enough.

The lyrics trick: CarPlay renders the now-playing artwork large. Verse renders the current synced-lyric window (previous / current / next lines) into a UIImage and publishes that as MPMediaItemArtwork, refreshed on each line change. Result: big synced lyrics on the car screen with zero entitlements. See Sources/Core/NowPlaying.swift.

Legal / distribution

• YouTube stream extraction violates YouTube's Terms of Service. App Store rejection is certain. This is a sideload-only personal build. Ship it to yourself, nobody else.
• Extraction breaks whenever YouTube rotates its signature cipher. Expect to bump YouTubeKit every few months. Build the UI so a failed extraction is a visible error, not a crash.
• Sideload lifetime: free Apple ID = 7-day provisioning, needs re-signing (use AltStore/SideStore to automate). Paid Developer Program ($99/yr) = 1-year provisioning, far less friction.

Setup

brew install xcodegen cocoapods
cd ~/Projects/Verse
xcodegen generate
pod install
open Verse.xcworkspace

Set your team + bundle id in project.yml before generating.

Where the real work is

File	Why it matters
Sources/Core/NowPlaying.swift	The CarPlay surface. Lyric-into-artwork renderer.
Sources/Core/Lyrics.swift	LRC parser + LRCLIB client + embedded-tag fallback.
Sources/Core/Player.swift	VLCKit engine. Plays every format, audio and video.
Sources/Core/AirPlayVideo.swift	AVPlayer path — the only way video reaches the car screen.
SPEC.md	Full build brief. Hand this to the agent.