This little-known app lets you view song lyrics on Apple CarPlay

Few things are more irritating than riding with people who sing songs without knowing the words. Thanks to Apple CarPlay, this never has to be the case on long car trips or short errands. The best part? James Corden doesn’t need to be along for the ride; all you need is an up-to-date iPhone, a few passengers and, above all, the little-known Dynamic Lyrics app.

As one of several third-party apps compatible with CarPlay, it displays time-synced lyrics on your infotainment system once you’ve connected your favorite streaming service, making it seamless for Apple Music or Spotify users.

That said, as with any CarPlay feature, we never recommend taking your eyes off the road to enjoy it, but it’s a great choice for keeping passengers entertained for hours. So if you want to celebrate The planBy driving in the HOV lane, you can make the whole car rap on any track. You can also enjoy translated lyrics when listening to songs in other languages, which is handy for singing along to tunes you like but don’t completely understand.

However, there’s a catch: it costs $9.99 to enable this feature permanently. So, before downloading it, make sure you are ready to pay the one-time price when you open the app and your device is updated to iOS 26 so you can enable it on CarPlay.

Once you’ve confirmed that your phone is updated, start by downloading the Dynamic Lyrics app from the App Store. When you open the app, it will ask you to connect the streaming service of your choice; whether it’s Apple Music or Spotify, just allow access to get started.

Although the process is a breeze for Apple Music and Spotify users, they will need to authorize the app using a default or custom method. Although the default authorization only takes a single click, you will likely have to reauthorize many times; On the other hand, setting up custom permission will take a few extra minutes and require more time to set up a Spotify client ID, but the Dynamic Lyrics app walks users through it to make things simple.

As noted above, the premium version of Dynamic Lyrics allows you to switch between different themes and customize the CarPlay widget to your liking. Some of the options include different colored backgrounds, including white, black, and a gradient that changes depending on the album cover, as well as two cover styles: vinyl or image, the latter displaying the full album cover.

After making your choice in the application itself, go to Settings > General > CarPlayselect your car and press the Widgets menu under Customize. Once you press Add a widgetyou will see three options; you will want to select one of the two headings Lyrics widget. Once you’ve added it, these will appear in your widget stack as small squares, but can be enlarged by tapping for a larger view of the lyrics.