Quote from Guido on 11.10.2025, 17:21

On iPhone

There are two settings under Appearance and Colors.
General Appearance: Determines the appearance of the NON NAVIGATION screens. For example when you are planning, or when you are viewing your route list.
Navigation Appearance: Determines the appearance of ONLY THE NAVIGATION screen.
When appearance is dark, it will use the map you selected for dark appearance (in the map styles). When appearance is light, it will use the map that you set for light appearance in the map styles.

On CarPlay

The two appearance settings mentioned above have NO AFFECT AT ALL.
Scenic will adopt the appearance of your CarPlay system and will use the map style that you set in map styles accordingly.

Now, before I go on, it's important to distinguish between CarPlay, the Apple software, and CarPlay, your unit, your Carpuride. BOTH of those have settings for appearance.
First... the CarPlay software. In the CarPlay settings app (reachable through the settings icon on CarPlay) there's an appearance section. There you can set it to Automatic or Always dark. If on Automatic, the CarPlay software will take the appearance that it receives from your CarPlay unit. If you set it to Always Dark, this will overrule the unit appearance setting and all your CarPlay apps will be in dark mode, including Scenic.

From the look of your screenshot, I can tell that your CarPlay system is in light mode, because your left bar is light. This means that Scenic will be in light mode and that's why the turn instruction bar and the arrival time bar are white. Your map is dark because you chose a dark map for light appearance.

As for your CarPlay unit, your Carpuride. There should be some kind of settings, I assume, where you can manually switch between dark and light. Some systems have an auto setting where they switch appearance automatically based on an Ambien light sensor or maybe time of day. From the tunnel scenario above, it sounds like that's what your Carpuride has. I don't know. It would be great if someone with a Carpuride could chime in here how this works on a Carpuride.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I believe Scenic is acting as expected/designed. If you want to force Scenic in dark mode, you'll either have to set the CarPlay software setting to Always dark, or your CarPlay unit setting to dark. These both affect the entire system though. All your apps will be in dark mode. There is no setting in Scenic to overrule the CarPlay appearance.

 

Quote from Atticuscat on 12.10.2025, 02:09

Thanks for the detailed rundown.  I’ll have another fiddle and see if I can pin this down because it’s a real problem when riding for up to an hour before and around sunset.  Carpuride’s instructions are practically non existent.  My unit (W702) has a brightness adjustment (I’ve set it to minimum in the screen shot) and a soft switch alongside the brightness slider which I have no idea what it does, there’s no mention of it in the instructions and it certainly doesn’t affect the screen when I try it.  I know this is a question for Carpuride, which is effectively a question that will remain unanswered.

So to be clear, Scenic nav appearance set to sunset <-> sunrise means the nav instructions will remain light until Scenic decides its sunset (which as I mentioned didn’t correspond with my local sunset by 14 minutes) even though I’ve overwritten the map style to use my dark map for light settings, as in the screenshot on my phone?  (Scenic at this point is not active on CarPlay so the CarPlay settings should not influence the phone.  Is that correct?).  How do I get to the appearance and colours settings in order to change the nav appearance to dark while I have an active route running?

Quote from Atticuscat on 12.10.2025, 04:06

Some more fiddling…. Setting Always Dark on CarPlay then I can easily toggle Always Show Dark Maps when I choose seems to do what I want, with Scenic set to sunset <-> sunrise.  This puts all apps in to dark mode on the CarPlay and Scenic navigation instructions are dark (but not compass, speed, distance) even with a light map but I can easily live with that.  These settings are only offered on the Apple icon settings button on the CarPlay display, not in the (Carpuride specific) CarPlay options on my phone.  It reminds me of trying to configure Microsoft systems years ago with settings scattered throughout the system and app options, I (thankfully!) don’t do that any more and I guess nearly everything is so complex and configurable it’s almost inevitable.  Fingers crossed this is a fix… pending test ride.

Quote from Guido on 12.10.2025, 07:57

So to be clear, Scenic nav appearance set to sunset <-> sunrise means the nav instructions will remain light until Scenic decides its sunset (which as I mentioned didn’t correspond with my local sunset by 14 minutes)

Not when you are on CarPlay. This “Navigation Appearance” HAS NO EFFECT / IS IGNORED when you are on CarPlay. When you are on CarPlay your CarPlay unit decides (based on ambient light sensor I suspect) to go to dark or light mode. That could explain the 14 minutes.

Quote from Atticuscat on 12.10.2025, 09:47

Quote from Guido on 12.10.2025, 07:57

So to be clear, Scenic nav appearance set to sunset <-> sunrise means the nav instructions will remain light until Scenic decides its sunset (which as I mentioned didn’t correspond with my local sunset by 14 minutes)

Not when you are on CarPlay. This “Navigation Appearance” HAS NO EFFECT / IS IGNORED when you are on CarPlay. When you are on CarPlay your CarPlay unit decides (based on ambient light sensor I suspect) to go to dark or light mode. That could explain the 14 minutes.

I think I have a solution so this question is more to satisfy curiosity…. With Scenic active on phone but phone connected to CarPlay the CarPlay overrides the Scenic settings?  So as in the portrait screen shot in my initial post the nav instructions etc remain light but with a dark map.  Turning off my CarPlay unit didn’t change this at the time.

Quote from Guido on 12.10.2025, 11:03

If that I am not 100% sure to be honest. I’d have to check the code. As you can tell it’s all pretty complicated with these appearance settings 🙂.

I think it works like this: If Scenic is the active app on CarPlay (visible on the CarPlay screen) it will take the appearance of the CarPlay unit (so Scenic appearance settings are ignored).

If another app is active on CarPlay (or if you are not connected to CarPlay at all) then Scenic will take appearance of its settings.