Apple Releases HomePod 15.6 Software With Siri Voice Recognition in Additional Languages

[steevn]

Siri asks my wife "Who's speaking?" just about every day when she tries to play music, turn on/off lights, add something to the shopping list. This is one of my few high tech purchases over the last 28 years of marriage where she wants to throw it out the window! Who's speaking, Mmmm hmmm, no response to repeated questions, etc., etc., etc. These HomePods are spiraling out of control. What happened to my OG HomePods? Apple seems to have dumbed them down over the last 4 years. They used to respond to a whisper. Now, I have to yell at them most of the time. Did Apple turn down some setting on the network side to reduce backend processing, etc.? Something has changed. Does Apple expect users will trust their Apple Car if they can’t keep a HomePod running smoothly? Hey Siri, take me to work. ”Who’s speaking?” “One sec…” “this is taking a bit too long” “Mmm hmm?” And while I‘m on my rant, would it be too much to ask the HomePod team to inject a little “love“ into Siri when I tell her goodnight to turn on my ceiling fan, white noise, and turn off the lights? She replies “Goodnight” but it sounds more like a question.

This happened to my wife and the issue was either Home or Siri being off in the iCloud settings. On her phone go to settings, tap name at top, tap icloud, make sure Home and Siri toggles are on and I think this may fix the issue.

Also open Home app, tap on home in top left, home settings, tap wife’s name, make sure Recognize My Voice is on in the Siri section just to be safe.

 

[macmac30]

This happened to my wife and the issue was either Home or Siri being off in the iCloud settings. On her phone go to settings, tap name at top, tap icloud, make sure Home and Siri toggles are on and I think this may fix the issue.

Also open Home app, tap on home in top left, home settings, tap wife’s name, make sure Recognize My Voice is on in the Siri section just to be safe.

Thanks for the tips! I checked all settings and they were all on.

 

[crees!]

Does it fix when you ask it to play a playlist of yours and the response is it can’t do that? Guess I’ll have to try that tomorrow

 

[mika-74]

In our family we speak German and Italian and listen to music in multiple languages. The thing that angers me most about Siri is that it is virtually impossible to ask it to play an Italian song (with an Italian title) having set German as Siri's language or vice versa. When I then think that Siri speaks many languages perfectly, I find it absurd and inconceivable that it does not recognize which language it is speaking in. At least they should implement a request like "play the song with the Italian title xxx." Is it possible that they can't get us to use 2 languages at the same time???
Same with announcements of push notifications, how it is possible that Siri is not recognising the language?

 

[lk400]

I dont understand, my HomePods have spoken Japanese since HomePod launched in Japan.

 

[lk400]

In our family we speak German and Italian and listen to music in multiple languages. The thing that angers me most about Siri is that it is virtually impossible to ask it to play an Italian song (with an Italian title) having set German as Siri's language or vice versa. When I then think that Siri speaks many languages perfectly, I find it absurd and inconceivable that it does not recognize which language it is speaking in. At least they should implement a request like "play the song with the Italian title xxx." Is it possible that they can't get us to use 2 languages at the same time???
Same with announcements of push notifications, how it is possible that Siri is not recognising the language?

Exactly the same. I thought that is what this update achieved, given HomePod has been available in Japaense for years. However I just tried it and it does not work.

 

[mika-74]

At least I could set specific languages on individual Homepods. But no. If one person in the family has set the language to a different one from the others, Siri goes crazy and becomes super slow.

 

[johannnn]

I dont understand, my HomePods have spoken Japanese since HomePod launched in Japan.

Now it can recognize your voice, so it can give different results if you or your partner is talking to Siri.

 

[ldj3]

I have multiple original homepods, minis and appleTV, whenever the OG homepod becomes the HomeHub most things stop working in Home, i.e. all my Hue lights say 'updating' and cant be found, all three cameras stop recording movement and go offline etc etc. On top of that siri has become stupid and controls on the iphone for music take more then 20 seconds to get to the homepod.
They seem to have slowed them down as they are afraid they are getting fried as they get older (As many examples online show). I hope this update fixes a bit of that, but I doubt it.

 

[ldj3]

I have multiple original homepods, minis and appleTV, whenever the OG homepod becomes the HomeHub most things stop working in Home, i.e. all my Hue lights say 'updating' and cant be found, all three cameras stop recording movement and go offline etc etc. On top of that siri has become stupid and controls on the iphone for music take more then 20 seconds to get to the homepod.
They seem to have slowed them down as they are afraid they are getting fried as they get older (As many examples online show). I hope this update fixes a bit of that, but I doubt it.

Also, plkease let me chose and HOLD which machine is the homehub, aka the hard wired appleTV....... and Not the now uselefss homepod OG.

 

[macmac30]

I have multiple original homepods, minis and appleTV, whenever the OG homepod becomes the HomeHub most things stop working in Home, i.e. all my Hue lights say 'updating' and cant be found, all three cameras stop recording movement and go offline etc etc. On top of that siri has become stupid and controls on the iphone for music take more then 20 seconds to get to the homepod.
They seem to have slowed them down as they are afraid they are getting fried as they get older (As many examples online show). I hope this update fixes a bit of that, but I doubt it.

Something tells me, if things don’t improve, 2023 will be the year of the HomePod OG Class Action lawsuit...

 

[lk400]

Now it can recognize your voice, so it can give different results if you or your partner is talking to Siri.

Oh, thank you for clarifying.