It's just Toyota doing this. If you use Apple CarPlay, the album cover never goes away.

 

Apple CarPlay has an option to turn it on and off:

 

Here is what is is, somewhere sometime somebody sued Toyota when they ran into that tree while looking at an album cover, just like that agreement screen that comes up at every boot up, this is how the lawyers try to protect them from further lawsuits. I have the birds eye view on mine, they put a lousy black T bar right in the middle of the front view just to prevent you from seeing ahead and using it while driving.

 

oh don't you just love those lawyers...
i have all my music on a tiny usb stick and of course, 2021 rav4 has just one data port;
so it's either the stick or the phone, not both. yes, i could copy all 60gb to the phone.
well, at least, Android Auto has better lawyers (i guess) as far as album pics are concerned.
i was pleasantly surprised to see them (while driving) on Spotify, Tidal and Musicolet.

 

I had an issue that every time I started the car the CarPlay would show the library and not the song playing I would have to tap the arrows in the upper right corner to get the song playing. But after doing the update to the latest iOS that has been released in the last couple of days, it is now back to normal.

 

Does anyone here think that this is truly a safety issue? To me, it is just stupid to not display the album image; as if we are gonna stay at that Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream for 3 minutes and ram right into the tree... Is this really a federal mandate or state-level regulation? Do all cars' media system do this? How about non-oem systems like Alpine or Pioneer? I'm ready and willing to spend some money if I knew for sure. Please comment folks...

My husband's 2016 Rav4 does.

 

My 2019 XSE JBL also displays the album cover.

 

My 2023 XSE PP JBL screen shows album art from the USB library. I think I saw a flash notice that Gracenote was updating the database.

 

This missing cover photo is the most stupid restriction ever in the auto industry (as far as I know Toyota is the only one who does this). I’ve had, GM, Honda & Jeeps that don’t have the restriction. It even corrupts the XM Gracenote on the screen. In Park everything shows up, Nice! Put in Drive and it’s all gone, ridiculous! If it’s distractions they are concerned with; what about the entire dash, speedo, gauges, text messages that pop up. What about the radio station’s name and song name on XM’s screen. What about Tesla’s giant tablet? Is that a distraction? We’re not looking to watch a DVD movie while driving, all we want is some satisfaction in seeing our artists. There are many icons on my 2024 Camry I just purchased ($40K) that I have to strain to see and figure out what the heck they mean. There’s a speed limit indicator on the instrument cluster that is smaller than the size of a postage stamp, Ridiculous! We need to all get together on this, keep bugging them with phone calls and emails to the corporation. We must do this!

 

My 2019 XSE JBL shows album cover when using carplay.