You’ve rented a Ford vehicle, gotten one as a loaner from the repair shop, or just paired your phone with Dad’s truck. Now it’s time to delete your phone from the infotainment system. Here’s how.
It’s all too easy to forget that when your phone pairs with a vehicle infotainment system that it shares all of your contacts, phone numbers, and even your call history. Information that the vehicle then retains even when your phone isn’t available. With your own car or truck, it’s no big deal because you use it without thinking of what’s required for the feature to work (for example, when you press the voice button on the steering wheel and say “call mary smith”).
But when you’re parting ways with your vehicle, it’s an entirely different story; you don’t want that information retained after you’re no longer driving it! Unfortunately, there’s no way when you pair a smartphone for you to specify that it’s a temporary connection and should be auto-deleted or, perhaps more accurately, auto-forgotten. If you rent cars a lot, you constantly find strange phones listed when you look at the known mobile devices list!
With the latest generation of Ford vehicles, the process of having your phone break up with your infotainment system is easy, but you need to remember to do it and know the key buttons to press. Let’s go through the process!
FIND THE LIST OF KNOWN DEVICES
I had the chance to drive a 2023 Ford Escape for a week, so this is all based on the latest version of the infotainment system. It might be slightly different in your Ford vehicle and, of course, if it’s more than a half-dozen years old, it might be a lot different. Hopefully, you can still follow along with a bit of sleuthing and experimentation along the way…
To start, push the HOME button to get to the main screen:
I tapped on the HOME button on the top left to reach this view. Notice that this Escape has an extra-wide screen and is showing my audiobook content on the right side. Very nice!
To proceed, tap on “Phone List” on the top left. If you don’t see it, try swiping left/right to reveal more buttons.
The “iDave 15 Pro” is mine, but whose other phones are these? Turns out that some of the other people who have driven this loaner car forgot to remove their phones from the system. Exactly the security and privacy problem we’re talking about!
DELETE A PHONE FROM A FORD VEHICLE
The logical step here is to tap on the name of the phone but that’s not, in fact, the next step. Instead, tap on “Phone Settings“, located above the various icons that show whether the phone should be connected via phone only, music only, or Apple CarPlay (or Android Auto, as PUNCHY’s phone shows). A tap on “Phone Settings” and you see the same list, but with different buttons:
This is a more compact view so Kent’s iPhone has shown up here too. Whoever Kent is!
You can adjust the specific connectivity settings for your phone with the three horizontal lines button, but since the task is to delete and forget the phone from the infotainment system, that’s done with a simple tap on the trashcan icon. When I tap on it, this appears:
I do want to remove my phone from the vehicle’s memory, so will tap on “Yes“.
There’s no confirmation, you are then just dropped back onto the previous screen, but this time your phone shouldn’t show up!
One more step: Don’t forget on your phone to go into Settings > Bluetooth and delete the vehicle’s entry. It’s pretty darn easy with both Android and iOS to do just that.
Mission accomplished. It’s a smart practice to ensure that you always remove your phone from the memory of any vehicle that you don’t actively drive and after all, it’s pretty easy to pair a new phone with these systems too.
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about basic computing, including automotive systems, for many years. Please check out both my auto tech help and computer basics tutorials to see what other helpful articles I’ve written!