Everything to know before putting a car key on your iPhone

Everything to know before putting a car key on your iPhone You can access your car without even having to unlock your iPhone. With Apple Pay, Apple helped make tapping your phone at point of sale terminals ubiquitous, but the same technology that exchange possible has plenty of other uses. Much like on Android, with a compatible car and a bit of setup, you can use your iPhone to store a set of digital car keys and unlock or even start your car with a tap. When it launched in 2020, Apple's digital car key feature offered compatibility with only a select number of cars, but that has meaningfully expanded in the years since. Now several popular car brands support Apple's digital car key, and it's become a lot more useful. If you've been wanting to add a copy of your car keys to your iPhone, but didn't know if your car or device would work with it, here's how to check and set things up. What is Apple's CarKey feature? Apple added support for digital car keys in its Wallet app with the release of iOS 14. Through the new (at the time) CarKey API, developers gained the ability to add a digital key to users' iPhone that can lock or unlock a vehicle with a tap. The feature launched on devices running iOS 14 and iOS 13 simultaneously, and Apple later introduced the ability for anyone with an iPhone or Apple Watch that has a U1 ultra-wideband chip to passively unlock or lock cars when within range. Depending on your car, the Wallet app can unlock, lock and start your car. And if you enable what Apple calls "Express Mode," it can also do all of those things without you having to first pull out and unlock your phone. How do digital car keys work on iOS? Apple's approach to car keys is similar to Google's and is based on the Car Connectivity Consortium's Digital Key specification. Once your phone and car are paired, a digital copy of your key is cryptographically secured on your device. Locking and unlocking a car works using your iPhone's NFC chip, just like tapping to pay. A Bluetooth connection between your smartphone and your car can remotely unlock and lock your car. Passive entry, where your phone automatically unlocks your car when you're nearby, uses Bluetooth and your phone's U1 chip to determine your location before locking your car's doors or starting its engine. Which iPhones and cars support digital car keys? At a minimum, Apple's digital car keys require an iPhone running iOS 13 with an NFC chip built in. That means you'll need to own either an iPhone XS or later or a second-generation iPhone SE or newer to use the feature. The iPhone's digital car keys were only available on the BMW 5 Series at launch, but several major car makers have adopted the feature since. For example, you can now use digital keys on Hyundai's Tucson, Ioniq 5 and 6, as well as the Rivian R1T and R1S. Apple doesn't maintain a list of which cars support digital keys (instead directing customers to call their car manufacturer to confirm support) but its list of cars that supp…