Rivian is about to make the iPhone and Apple Watch feel less like optional accessories and more like the keys themselves. The company’s chief software officer, Wassym Bensaid, confirmed that a 2025.46 over-the-air update will flip on native Apple Wallet car-key support for second-generation R1S SUVs and R1T pickups later this month, moving access out of the Rivian app and into Wallet at the operating-system level. That shift sounds small on paper, but it changes how owners will interact with the vehicle every time they walk up to it.

Under the new system, adding your Rivian key to Apple Wallet will behave like other digital keys Apple supports: the key lives in Wallet, can be used from an iPhone or Apple Watch, and will operate without opening a separate Rivian app. Rivian’s implementation follows Apple’s Car Key framework, which also offers an Express Mode so you don’t have to unlock or authenticate the device each time you want to get in. That makes the experience closer to a traditional fob—except the fob is now in your pocket as software.

Where Rivian’s work feels genuinely modern is in how it combines proximity tech with sensible fallbacks. Gen-2 R1 hardware includes Ultra-Wideband (UWB), which allows the truck to sense your phone’s precise location for true passive entry: approach the vehicle with your device in a pocket and the doors can unlock automatically. NFC remains as a fallback—hand the phone to the reader or tap the bumper—and Rivian will let the Wallet key rely on Apple’s Power Reserve, meaning the key can still work for a few hours after an iPhone fully shuts down from a dead battery. For people who spend long days driving, camping, or otherwise pushing their devices and cars to the edge, that dead-phone safety net matters a lot.

Digital keys also make sharing and access management far easier. Rivian’s Gen-2 Wallet integration will let an owner share a key with others via the usual channels—AirDrop, iMessage, or other messaging apps—and the limit is being expanded to cover up to eight people per vehicle, which is a practical change for families or shared-use scenarios. Because it’s software, access can be issued temporarily and revoked instantly, removing the awkwardness of tracking down a missing physical fob or handing over a spare. That little convenience is part of a larger trend where cars are turning into networked devices whose permissions are administered like any cloud service.

There’s a but, and it will sting some early adopters: not all Rivians are getting the upgrade. The Wallet key will only work on second-generation R1S and R1T vehicles built with the newer UWB modules and security hardware—first-generation R1s produced through the 2024 model year don’t have the necessary antennas and secure elements, so the feature can’t be backported. That decision is technically sensible—digital-key systems depend on specific hardware integrations—but it’s a reality check for owners who bought early and expected software parity down the line.

It’s worth noting how this move sits inside Rivian’s broader relationship with Apple. The company still refuses to support Apple CarPlay, a position its CEO has defended as intentional control over the in-car experience. At the same time, Rivian has selectively added deeper Apple integrations—Apple Music on its native infotainment system, and now Wallet keys—while keeping the main UI under Rivian’s control. That hybrid approach signals a pragmatic stance: borrow what’s useful from Apple’s secure ecosystem without turning the central screen into a reflected iPhone. For customers who value Apple features but also want a distinctive Rivian interface, the result will feel like a compromise that tilts toward Rivian’s priorities.

For owners standing in the driveway, the change should be a net gain: fewer taps, less fumbling, and an actual path out of the “open-the-app-to-unlock” awkwardness that has dogged app-based keys. For Rivian, the update is a small technical bet with outsized practical benefit—slotting the vehicle into the same wallet people already trust for payments, transit, and hotel room keys—while also reminding buyers that not every headline feature can be shoehorned into older hardware. Expect the update to roll out in waves once Rivian flips the switch later this month; the company hasn’t given a specific release date, but the pathway is now official and rolling.