We're hitting the same issue, and after some digging I think I know what's going on. It isn't limited to symbols: any SVG image asset disappears in CarPlay on iOS 27 when the app is built with Xcode 27.
Our setup: Xcode 27.1 RC (27A9275), iPhone 15 Pro on iOS 27.0.1. The icons are SVG image sets in a Swift package, shown with SwiftUI in the CarPlay window. The console logs No image named '<name>' found in asset catalog. Our PDF icons show up fine, and the same SVG icons look fine on the iPhone screen.
What seems to be happening:
Xcode 26.5 turned each SVG into a single sRGB image. Xcode 27 now also generates a second Display P3 version. PDFs still get only the sRGB one.
When the app is thinned for a specific iPhone (running from Xcode, or installing from the App Store/TestFlight), only the version that matches the phone's P3 screen is kept, so the sRGB image is removed.
The CarPlay screen is sRGB, so it asks for the sRGB image, which is gone. iOS 27 doesn't seem to fall back to the P3 one, which would explain why iOS 26.6.1 still works.
How I confirmed it: I made two builds of the same app with the same SVG and installed both on the same phone with devicectl. The thinned build doesn't show the icon. The non-thinned one (built for generic iOS with ENABLE_ONLY_ACTIVE_RESOURCES=NO) shows it fine.
Setting the gamut to "sRGB and Display P3" or turning off Preserve Vector Data didn't help.
Workaround: replace the SVGs with vector PDFs. That fixed it for us.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
CarPlay
Tags: