Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Releases HomePod Software 15.3

B/D said:
Well, I´ve done a bit of testing after updating to 15.3 with my living room OG stereo pair and so far I am impressed.

Sound wise it seems that the overall muddy sound signature with recessed mids and overbearing messy bass of tvOS 14/15 its finally gone. So much clear and balanced.

No popping, no Airplay issues. Siri requests are faster than ever and overall the whole interaction with the speakers seems super responsive and fast now, like it should be. And she actually stays at the voice volume level that you tell it to in subsequent interactions, even with "automatic Siri volume" toggle enabled in settings, which is great.

There is just one area that unfortunately seems the same as previous tvOS 15 firmwares, and that is Homekit. There Siri still lags "one sec, I´m on it" a lot although for me it always carrie on with the scene at the end which is a huge improvement over previous firmwares. It just take a long time to do so and lags, but at least she get it done now.

Frankly, given the ******** that the homepods software/user experience has been since 14.6, I´m very happy with the update.

Better late than never to show some care for the homepod platform, I suppose. This makes me hopeful of future firmwares.
Click to expand...


Today with more free time I have continued the testing.


Lossless playback is still not bug free, unfortunately. The old bug that randomly causes loud static after 15 seconds of playing a lossless track on IOS and Mac OS is to my dismay present in tvOS 15.3 (I´m talking about the homepods, not the apple tv. The Homepods use a fork of tvOS).

Disabling lossless in the home app settings, of course, fixes this, along with a strange old radio interference sound, sort of a very faint crackling/popping -not to be confused with the homepod software/hardware popping issues-, that from time to time emerges during the playback of a lossless album.
This two lossless related bugs I have experienced them quite a bit on Mac OS and IOS since lossless was launched last summer.

I dont, for the life of me, understand what can be so complicated logistically about streaming an ALAC file, and why these issues have not been completely erradicated many months later yet.


Also the old homepod related Atmos bug is still present on 15.3. The Homepods will play the Atmos tracks by default automatically, even if the Dolby Atmos toggle is disabled in the home app settings.


What you need to do is to force closing the home app on your IOS device, open it again, and enable Atmos.

Then force close it again, open it, and disable Atmos. It will stay disabled for good forever (even through software updates)... until you factory reset the homepod again.

If you do, the homepod will play Atmos tracks by default despite the setting being off in the home app, and you will have to repeat all the steps indicated here to truly turn it off.
 
Unggoy Murderer said:
When it comes to account issues, remove the device from accounts (home, iCloud, etc) first before resetting it. Using the software reset retains account settings / affiliations.

Reset HomePod or HomePod mini – Apple Support (UK)

Find out how to reset your HomePod or HomePod mini to its factory settings before sending it in for service, selling it or giving it away.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...

Interesting, thank you very much.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Unggoy Murderer
Unggoy Murderer said:
When it comes to account issues, remove the device from accounts (home, iCloud, etc) first before resetting it. Using the software reset retains account settings / affiliations.

Reset HomePod or HomePod mini – Apple Support (UK)

Find out how to reset your HomePod or HomePod mini to its factory settings before sending it in for service, selling it or giving it away.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...
Thanks! Will try it this evening and then report back!!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Unggoy Murderer
Unggoy Murderer said:
When it comes to account issues, remove the device from accounts (home, iCloud, etc) first before resetting it. Using the software reset retains account settings / affiliations.

Reset HomePod or HomePod mini – Apple Support (UK)

Find out how to reset your HomePod or HomePod mini to its factory settings before sending it in for service, selling it or giving it away.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
Click to expand...

You are my hero, that actually worked and now my homepod stereo pair is working just fine again :)

1. I’ve removed them from iCloud
2. Then removed them from home app
3. Disconnected the power cord
4. Plugged back in and after ten secs put my finger on the HomePods
3. Waited till the lights turned red and then set up as new

Thanks!!!
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: B/D, Xand&Roby and Unggoy Murderer
twistedpixel8 said:
Weird that yours is intermittent. For me that problem has been there consistently since iOS 15 dropped. It has honestly put me off buying any more Apple products if they’re just going to make them worse and leave them like that for literally months.
Click to expand...
It's been that way for me as well. Started with 15 I think. Never had an issue prior. I don't have the issue with any of my iOS devices (watch, phone, ipad). Just my OG HomePods. The minis seem to be fine too. Only the big boys get sassy with me. Very annoying because like someone else said, while they're still trying to figure it out, I have already asked my watch and it's done what I asked.
 
I seem to have lost Dolby Atmos on my HomePod Mini when paired with Apple TV 4K.

Any ideas?
 
AbSoluTc said:
It's been that way for me as well. Started with 15 I think. Never had an issue prior. I don't have the issue with any of my iOS devices (watch, phone, ipad). Just my OG HomePods. The minis seem to be fine too. Only the big boys get sassy with me. Very annoying because like someone else said, while they're still trying to figure it out, I have already asked my watch and it's done what I asked.
Click to expand...
I might have stumbled across the cause of the issue. Do you have a Philips Hue Hub? Supposedly it’s caused by a phantom device being stuck in the Hue database and it’s trying to publish that device to HomeKit but HomePod isn’t parsing the bundle of info correctly. The solution is (you may die a little inside) is to completely reset your Hue bridge and add all your lights and other devices again. I have like 50 devices attached to my Hue bridge and over 30 scenes across all my rooms. I’d be better off starting HomeKit from scratch. I feel like crying at this point.

Odd that your OG is problematic but your minis are ok. I’d have expected it to be the same for both given they run the same software.
 
mbooker said:
I seem to have lost Dolby Atmos on my HomePod Mini when paired with Apple TV 4K.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

The Minis do not support Atmos. Never have.

* HomePod mini doesn't support Dolby Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound.


The Apple TV was reporting Atmos support in its audio and video settings when a Homepod was set as its default audio output, without differentiating between an OG Homepod and a Mini, which led to some confussion. That seems to be fixed now with tvOS 15.3, and the Apple TV now indicates Atmos support only with the OG Homepod, which is correct.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mbooker
I installed this update on all four of my OG Homepods and all is well. For some reason it took a couple of tries to install on two of them. I was coming from 14.7. I like the new sound profile, as mentioned above, it sounds cleaner than before. Only negative was I had to figure out how to turn off Siri's annoying notification when changing the volume on the Homepod (I do not need my music interrupted to hear Siri say I am turning the volume up or down... I know what I am doing when I hit the "+ / - " Siri!).
 
Last edited:
It's time for HomePod alarms to gently ramp up rather than smacking our sleeping faces with sudden sound. Bose alarms have been cascading up in a lovely way for decades.
 
zapmymac said:
Been almost a week, read the posts: looks like it is safe to update my 2 OG’s ??
Click to expand...
Honestly, yes. There are still bugs here and there, no question, but it is frankly staggering how much better 15.3 is compared to the buggy, garbage 15.x releases prior to it.

My take on it is that this has helped enormously.
www.bloomberg.com

Apple Hires New HomePod Software Head as It Takes on Amazon Echo

Apple Inc. has hired a new engineer to lead software efforts for its HomePod smart speaker, aiming to turn the product into a bigger hit.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: zapmymac
twistedpixel8 said:
I might have stumbled across the cause of the issue. Do you have a Philips Hue Hub? Supposedly it’s caused by a phantom device being stuck in the Hue database and it’s trying to publish that device to HomeKit but HomePod isn’t parsing the bundle of info correctly. The solution is (you may die a little inside) is to completely reset your Hue bridge and add all your lights and other devices again. I have like 50 devices attached to my Hue bridge and over 30 scenes across all my rooms. I’d be better off starting HomeKit from scratch. I feel like crying at this point.

Odd that your OG is problematic but your minis are ok. I’d have expected it to be the same for both given they run the same software.
Click to expand...
Ugh, I hope that's not the case. I do have a Philips Hue Hub. I don't have any scenes so that's not too bad. I do have everything in rooms in HomeKit though. Plus all my automations. Would be a lot of work but nice to fix. I would be very displeased if that was not the fix. Any confirmation on this or info somewhere I can read?

Can you not go into the hub and clear out the offending thing?
 
macmac30 said:
How about the occasional "Who's speaking?" Nothing pisses my wife off more when Siri asks her "Who's speaking?" after a request. My wife has been a registered home user for the last two years!!! And she is the only female in the house! Siri, figure it out!!!
Click to expand...
Siri asks me this and I’m the only ONE in the house. But she has no problem scaring the crap out of me by consistently answering people on my TV who have asked her nothing.
 
  • Haha
  • Like
Reactions: Xand&Roby, zapmymac, twistedpixel8 and 1 other person
AbSoluTc said:
Ugh, I hope that's not the case. I do have a Philips Hue Hub. I don't have any scenes so that's not too bad. I do have everything in rooms in HomeKit though. Plus all my automations. Would be a lot of work but nice to fix. I would be very displeased if that was not the fix. Any confirmation on this or info somewhere I can read?

Can you not go into the hub and clear out the offending thing?
Click to expand...
I tried to fix mine but didn’t really get anywhere. I’m further down the rabbit hole and it seems the thing I mentioned with Hue is just one contributing factor. I’ve got a support case open with Apple over this and they’re calling me back on Saturday but I don’t expect they’ll have much to say.

For me, disabling HomeBridge-hue plugin in HomeBridge did improve Siri’s response but you could tell from the lights on the top of the HomePod mini that she was on the cusp of spouting something and a few times during testing she still said “working on it”. I’m back to thinking this is a systemic problem with HomePod Siri.

If you’re interested, the Reddit thread about Hue being the issue is here (the instructions on how to fix are in the comments but don’t get too excited in case you don’t end up with a real fix):
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/sejatw
 
twistedpixel8 said:
I tried to fix mine but didn’t really get anywhere. I’m further down the rabbit hole and it seems the thing I mentioned with Hue is just one contributing factor. I’ve got a support case open with Apple over this and they’re calling me back on Saturday but I don’t expect they’ll have much to say.

For me, disabling HomeBridge-hue plugin in HomeBridge did improve Siri’s response but you could tell from the lights on the top of the HomePod mini that she was on the cusp of spouting something and a few times during testing she still said “working on it”. I’m back to thinking this is a systemic problem with HomePod Siri.

If you’re interested, the Reddit thread about Hue being the issue is here (the instructions on how to fix are in the comments but don’t get too excited in case you don’t end up with a real fix):
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/sejatw
Click to expand...

Thanks, I will read it. I honestly think it is an issue with HomePod Siri. Siri on my watch/phone do not have the same issue.
 
AbSoluTc said:
Thanks, I will read it. I honestly think it is an issue with HomePod Siri. Siri on my watch/phone do not have the same issue.
Click to expand...
Yep it’s definitely an issue with HomePod Siri but it must be something that’s triggering it as not everyone experiences the issue. It’s an odd one. I just hope Apple is at least aware of it and working on a solution.
 
I think my OG HomePod recently updated to 15.3 and it seems to be bricked. No sign of life, tried power cycling it, etc... tried all the holding to touch whilst turning power outlet on, etc... It's definitely out of warranty by now, but wondering if anyone else had this.
 
I’ve got 5 dotted around the house but I had to turn the hey Siri listening function off as the thing keep interrupting my conversations with bizarre statements. ; I dont agree with that , sorry ! Was an example… I guess big brother really is watching you

With that off they become pretty useless unfortunately
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back