Seayora on CarPlay and Android Auto

Hear and answer your conversations by voice or with Siri, play and send voice notes, call whoever you are driving to see, and get one-tap directions to the day’s stops — plus a plain explanation of why paying and signing deliberately stay out of the car.

Seayora runs on CarPlay and on Android Auto, and in the car it is first of all a way to talk to people: read a conversation, hear it out loud, answer with a set phrase or your own voice, and ring whoever you are driving to see. Alongside that it shows the day’s stops with one-tap directions. Connect your phone to the car the way you normally would and Seayora appears on the dashboard alongside your other apps.

It opens on Messages, on every account type. That is deliberate — the thing most people actually do at a wheel is talk to somebody, and hunting through a menu to do it is exactly what a car screen should not ask of you.

What it shows

Your car screens depend on your account type, the same way your app tabs do. Messages is always the first one.

Tenants

Landlords

Property managers

Owners

Service professionals

Technicians

Getting directions

Every stop that has an address on file carries a Directions button. Tapping it hands the address to the car's own navigation app — Apple Maps on CarPlay, Google Maps or whatever you have set on Android Auto. Seayora never draws its own map: your navigation app already knows the traffic and already has lane guidance, and switching between two maps mid-journey is exactly the sort of thing a car screen should not ask you to do.

If a property has no address recorded, the button says so rather than doing nothing.

Reading and answering a conversation

The Messages screen lists your conversations, unread first, with who wrote and when. Open one and you get the last few messages — a catch-up, not the whole transcript. Tap any of them to hear it read out, or turn on "Read messages aloud" and the newest one is spoken as soon as you open the thread.

On CarPlay the words of a message are never shown on the car screen — Apple does not allow it, and a screen your passengers can read is the wrong place for them anyway — so a message is something you hear: tap it, or ask Siri. On Android Auto, the Messages screen is Android Auto’s own conversation view: it reads a conversation out, takes a reply you speak, and marks it read. Open, on any conversation there, shows the full car thread with Call, voice notes and set phrases.

There is no keyboard on a moving car screen, so there are two ways to answer.

Set phrases

One tap, sent:

• On my way.
• Running a little late — sorry.
• I will call you shortly.
• Got it, thanks.
• I am outside.
• All finished here.
• Thanks — see you shortly.

They are deliberately about presence and acknowledgment — "On my way", "Running a little late" — rather than anything that commits you to a time. A promise made at 70mph by somebody who has not looked at their schedule is a promise that gets broken.

Voice notes

For anything the set phrases do not cover, record one. Tap Record a voice note, say it, tap Send. It lands in the conversation exactly like a voice note sent from the app, and the other person can play it on their phone or on the website.

Recording stops on its own after a minute, whether or not you remember to press Send — a phone left recording road noise for an hour, and then uploading it, helps nobody. If you decide against it, Discard throws it away.

A voice note somebody sent you plays through the car’s speakers: tap it in the conversation, and tap again to pause. The sender sees that it was played, exactly as when you play it in the app.

Calling

The Calls screen is the people you actually talk to, with anyone you missed at the top so you can ring them back from where you saw it. You can also call straight from a conversation.

A Seayora call in the car behaves like any other call: it appears in the car’s own call display, the audio comes through the car speakers, and the answer and hang-up buttons on your steering wheel work. Voice only — there is no video call in the car, and there will not be one.

Some conversations cannot be called and the car says which and why: a group (a car rings one person; conference calls are on your phone), Seayora Support (answered in the app, not by phone), and a website visitor, who has no number.

Being told about a message

On Android, a message that arrives while you are driving is announced by Android Auto itself, and you can dictate a reply to the Assistant without opening anything. That reply goes into the same conversation as anything you send from the app or the website.

On iPhone, a Seayora message that arrives while you drive appears in CarPlay with who it is from — never what it says — and Siri can read it to you and take your reply. Only messages reach the car; rent, repairs and receipts wait for your phone.

Siri

On iPhone, Siri works with Seayora, in the car and anywhere else: "Read my Seayora messages", "Reply", "Send a message to Dana on Seayora", and "Call Dana on Seayora". Siri sends into the same conversation the app does, and a call Siri starts is a normal Seayora voice call that the car shows on its own call screen.

The first time you open the app after using it in the car, it asks whether Siri may do this — on your phone, when you are not driving. You can change your answer at any time in Settings → Seayora in the car, or in your iPhone’s Settings → Seayora → Siri. Siri calls are voice only.

What the car deliberately will not do

Paying, signing and approving are not available in the car — a car screen has no lock in front of it.

This is a design decision, not a missing feature. Your app lock — the PIN or pattern you set the first time you signed in on that phone — lives inside the Seayora app. A car screen is drawn by the car, so it never passes through that lock: anything on it can be done by whoever is sitting in the driver's seat, and that is not always you. A car screen is also read by your passengers, and often by anybody standing next to the vehicle.

So the car will never:

• take a rent payment, or any other payment;
• sign or send a lease;
• approve or decline a rental application;
• approve something an AI assistant proposed;
• show an email address, a phone number, a door code or a unit's WiFi password;
• show a resident's surname.

Messaging, voice notes and calling are the exception, and that is the line: they are how you talk to somebody, and anything you say wrong you can correct in the next message. A payment or a signature cannot be taken back, and neither can a decision about somebody else’s application.

All of those are in the app for when you are parked. On Android Auto the car tells you so when you tap something that needs them; on CarPlay the button is simply not there, because Apple does not let a car screen send you to your phone.

Hiding amounts

In the app, under Settings → Seayora in the car, "Hide amounts" masks every dollar figure on the dashboard. It is a setting on that phone rather than on your account, because it is about who can see that particular screen — a work van with a crew in it is a different question from a car you drive alone.

The same screen has "Read messages aloud", which speaks a message as soon as you open it instead of waiting for you to press Read aloud. It is off by default, for the same reason.

When it cannot reach us

A car often has worse signal than your desk. If Seayora cannot refresh, the car keeps showing the last thing it loaded and says how old it is — it does not blank the screen. And if one part of your account cannot be read, that screen says "couldn't check" rather than showing you an empty list: "no stops today" and "we could not load your stops" are very different facts when you are deciding whether to drive home.

Signing out

Signing out on your phone clears the car immediately — the stops, the addresses, the messages and the amounts all go. There is no way to sign in from the car; that happens on the phone, where your app lock can do its job.

Related guides

• Home Screen Widgets (iOS & Android)
• Doing things from a notification

Related features and guides

• Home Screen Widgets (iOS & Android) — Documentation. Put rent, repairs, jobs, money and messages on your phone's home screen or Lock Screen, refreshed automatically — which widgets each account type gets, how to add them, and what they show when you are signed out.
• Doing things from a notification — Documentation. Reply to a message, call back a missed call or answer a repair straight from the notification — what each kind offers, what a tap opens, and what deliberately still needs the app.
• Siri, Shortcuts, Control Center & App Shortcuts — Documentation. Open Seayora screens, open one conversation, search and send a message with Siri, Spotlight, the Shortcuts app, the Action button and Control Center on iPhone — plus what Siri AI on iOS 27 can do with your conversations, what it is and is not told, and the shortcuts on the Android app icon.
• Voice Notes in Messaging — Feature. Record and send voice notes in any Seayora conversation. Transcoded server-side so they play on iPhone, Android, and desktop alike, stored with the thread, and searchable as part of the property record.
• Sign In From Any Device — Feature. Seayora runs in the browser on desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone with one account. Messages, voice notes, call history, documents, and payments stay in sync in realtime across every device you are signed in on.
• Vacation Home and Short-Term Rental Tax Rules: 14 Days and 7 Days — Guide. The IRS rules for renting out a vacation home or short-term rental: the under-15-day rule, the 14-day personal use test and the 7-day average stay rule.

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