DIGITAL KEY: I lost faith in it

[Mickey]

Really happy when my new Limited came with Digital Key a couple weeks ago. I thought not having to carry a key would be great. It was for about 10 days till it quit. I was headed to the Toyota store to have the side steps removed and luckily for me i had my wife’s set of keys as i wouldn’t be turning over my phone while we went to lunch and the mechanic pulled off the steps.

Somewhere in going to the store and picking up the 4RUNNER my service went out enough they could not resolve it. I went home and contacted Toyota Customer Experience Center. Spent 3 hours that day and they contacted me the next day with a new guy. This ended up i had them take my phone off, told myself nor my wife would use the Digital Key and they had to take my electronics back to factory settings. This included the 14” screen and 12”dash back as well. My wife already said she would not only use digital key and after this no way i would 100% trust my iPhone/key. Thinking somewhere and this happened without real key and being stuck.

End of story as my wife is the principle driver they hooked her phone to the car without Digital Key and mine will work when I’m in it for phone/WAZE and I’m good.

I am posting this if you don’t have your real key and your digital key goes out could be a real problem.

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[HVLA]

I would never even consider using my phone as a key. Especially when I often dont even have it with me.

 

[sliver]

I paid for it, I had no choice, and the thing never worked for me either... Next maintenance I'll bring it up to the dealer service department.

 

[Mickey]

My trade-in on this was a ‘23 Limited Tacoma with the built in phone charger pad (THAT NEVER WORKED).
I put this in the same category but was charged EXTRA for it.
At least this phone charger pad works.

 

[kekecarioca]

It came from factory on TH< did not even try looking into it.
Since Toyota seems to be slapping those digital keys on higher trims, it gave me a bargain chip to remove some PIO I did not want....I did have to suck up a few...
I'm old school and yes the key fob is large but oh well....

Thanks for sharing the experience. It give s me more peace of mind that it's not worth my time looking into it.

 

[Formidable]

My digital key only locks and unlocks the car. Can’t start it. Basically useless.

 

[Pierrous1]

My digital key worked for two weeks and then nothing. Completely deleted profile and app then started from scratch and it still won't download.....been trying for two and a half months and keep getting the same error message below. Never had an issue on my BMW, so I will never trust it.

 

[efb729]

I have a new 2025 4Runner that also came with the digital key. I have only used it a couple of times, as it seems very unreliable. We had a Tesla for five years, and we only used the phone as a key, and it worked great. Toyota is great with the mechanical side, but as far as the software side, it seems to be behind other car companies, plus they want to charge for access. I love my 4Runner, but I wish Toyota could do a better job with the software end.

 

[Dr_Al]

Learned my lesson when it comes to Toyota and software. The number of the features on my wife's Rav4 don't work because Toyota stopped supporting their apps on the radio. Now when the fuel light comes on and the radio asks if it should list the best prices for gas near by it fails to work. I'm fine with switching to Android Auto and CarPlay on newer vehicles but to just stop supporting past versions is a dick move. So now I will not pay for any service like the digital key.

 

[Andre1111]

It’s not just a 4Runner issue. The digital key is just as unreliable in my 2024 Rx350h.

 

[coloradomarmot]

Moot point for me since I disabled all the connected services, so it won’t work.

The digital key in our Tesla works just fine, so it’s not a tech problem, but an implementation problem.

 

[jjbailey930]

After two months, only couple of times failed to start. I expect to use it more in winter. Then until the subscription expires. Came with my trim level. I would never drive without the real key which iI thought was required to drive off.

 

[ColoradoRoz]

Still waiting to receive my orp, but in the meantime I can share some experience I've had with this.
We had a tesla model y and while there were a lot of things that I hated about that car, when it came to software stuff just worked, including the digital key. Outside of occasional Bluetooth connection hiccups I never gave it a 2nd thought.
We got rid of that thing and got a polestar 2 - it too has a digital key functionality and it absolutely sucks.
Hearing your experience here it seems we are like years in and other manufacturers just can't get it right for some reason. There is ZERO point in having a digital key if I have to carry the physical key no matter what.
I will say that outside of a very few instances the tesla digital key experience was actually pretty good and while it took a while to adjust to it, once I did it was totally fine. Which is to say I myself would be ok with it if they (toyota, etc) could get it to work properly.

 

[Timmybung]

I've tried to download the digital key a bunch of times and it's never worked.
Useless option to be sure.
Frankly annoying I paid for it but it doesn't work whatsoever.

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