Can you stop the JBL system from automatically playing iPod tracks whenever you plug your phone in?

By "plug it in to my car" I assume you mean connect it to the USB port using the lightning wire. You must be using the wired connection for charging. I charge my 7th gen iPod Nano in the car every now and then and have noticed similar behavior. Can't quite nail it down, but it seems like when I plug it in, it just goes to my song list and starts playing at the first cut. If I select the Audio screen on the MFD, the RAND button is highlighted, meaning selected. It will randomly bounce around in the playlist if I let it keep playing, like it is hardwired to do this upon detection. It doesn't do this when it pairs up on Bluetooth. It picks up where I left off usually, unless I paused near the end of a program and then it will restart that program from the beginning. There are not any configuration settings for external players in the JBL unit that I am aware of, and no settings in the limited menu of my iPod. Probably nothing in any iPhone menus either. Just something to deal with before putting the car in drive.

 

I had the same problem but, just updated the firmware on the stereo and it is now fixed. When I plug in my iPhone it does not automatically override the radio and go to the ipod setting it continues with the radio.