Hi All - Last week I purchased a 2025 ES-300H Ultra Luxury Trim with 8K miles from a Toyota dealer. Very much lover the car! However there are 2 annoyances I've found:

1. When using Apple CarPlay and playing Apple Music and I invoke Siri either by pressing the button on the Steering Wheel or saying "Siri", the music does not pause and obviously makes it hard to interact. Of note, if I'm listening to a book in the Audible app, it DOES pause just fine. Music pauses fine in my other vehicle (2021 CRV) so this seems like a car problem. Things I've tried so far:

• Unpairing and repairing
• Trying wired carplay instead of wireless
• Checking the firmware level of the Lexus infotainment center - I did the whole routine with plugging in a USB stick and copying off the info and uploading that to Lexus, but the site said my system was up to date
• Making sure my iphone is up to date.

None of this changed anything. Any solutions, suggestions or workarounds would be appreciated. I've done some searching and saw that some people recommend just turning up the volume on the Siri voice but I'd really prefer it pause the music.

Annoyance #2 - I'm used to my vehicles auto-locking when I walk away with the key-fob. I can't seem to find a setting to turn this on. However when I do forget to lock the car (which right now is often), within a couple of minutes I get a notificatoin on my phone in the Lexus app telling me the car is unlocked and I'm able to lock it from the app. That's a nice feature, but it's hard for me to believe it can't just auto-lock.

Thanks in advance for any help and I'd love to hear any other tips or tricks for this model car you may know.

 

I have a 2025 ES350 UL and there is no Auto-Lock Feature. --- If it had one, I would not use it..................

--- A friend of mine bought a new Honda Ridgeline, and we thought this was a great feature, so we enabled it. A week later he went into a store and I sat in the car, reading a book. He walked away from the car and the doors locked, I didn't think much about it, and 10 minutes later, I decided to go into the store and opened the door to get out. The car's alarm feature went off, I was pretty much helpless to get it to stop blaring its horn. We disabled the auto-lock feature and have never looked back.

 

Unfortunately this is something that changed with the infotainment system for the 2023 model year. There’s nothing that can be done. You’ll learn to turn down your music volume before interacting with Siri. If the music volume is not too loud, it works okay.

 

I wouldn't use it either. I can't believe that people are fretting over touching the door handle when they walk away from the car.

 

Yes, that seems to be how my 2023 works when engaging Siri. I usually mute the audio first by pressing and holding the mode button on the steering wheel. Then press and hold to unmute when finished.

 

Thanks for this tip! I tried it today and was pleasantly surprised to find that it paused rather than muted. Which is even better. Nice to be able to control all from the steering wheel.

 

try resetting the phone if you have not tried that yet.

 

Wow, that needs to be fixed if that's the case. I would find that very annoying.

 

OP, Are you holding the steering wheel talk button for about 1–3 seconds? On Android Auto, a short press brings up the Lexus Assistant, but a longer press launches Google Assistant, which will pause whatever audio is playing. I don't know if CarPlay behaves the same way.

Also, Do you have the latest infotainment update (version 2170)? It's almost exclusively focused on Apple / iPhone / CarPlay functionality. Maybe there's a fix in there.
You could check the update thread here:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es-...re-update.html

 

Yes I did try this - Because really this "feels" more like a phone problem than the car. But it works fine in my CRV.

 

Yes Carplay works the same way - hold for a 1-3 seconds for Siri to popup - shorter is the Lexus Assistant. It does pause some things like Audible but not Apple Music. I will check out that thread you listed -Thanks. I did go through the Lexus site and did the thing where I uploaded info from the car to a USB stick and uplaoded that to the web and it said there were no updates available but I don't remeber what the version was. - will check on that.

 

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Ask dealer for the latest infotainment system update. This might be addressed in the latest update.

 

Same here. Holding the voice button for Siri will pause my audio books, but does not pause nor mute USB music, radio.

 

I have a 2025 es350 F sport handling. Bought a new one last November. I JUST realized if I do NOT LOCK the car, within a few minutes after walking away, the car locks automatically. NICE, but probably will will touch the door handle............. my OCD won't let me just walk away and THINK it will lock 100% of the time.