Using control center on my iPhone for the HP as a remote might just have saved it from being returned to Best Buy. The HP and I thank you.
Got any more tips?
Probably nothing you don’t already know, but just in case here’s a quick rundown of some of what I consider to be the most useful things.
You can tweak how HomePod works to some degree by opening the Home App and Force Touching the icon for HomePod then selecting Details from the bottom right of the screen.
In here you can for instance, turn off the HomePod display or add an audible beep so you know that you’ve invoked ‘Hey Siri’ properly and it’s listening.
You can also restrict who gets to use AirPlay by choosing from Everyone, Anyone on the same network or Only people sharing this Home.
If you have kids and don’t want their delicate little lobes unexpectedly bombarded by your classic NWA collection, you can turn off explicit content.
You can also turn off the listening history in here, so that your personal recommendations aren’t affected by said kids repeatedly playing whatever that damn song from Frozen is.
Open up Control Center on your iOS device and expand the audio widget. There you'll see a separate entry for the HomePod. Tap on it and it takes you into Apple Music, using the iPhone as a remote.
Returning to some “Hey Siri” commands, in addition to the examples I listed above, You can do things like setting the volume level exactly by saying ‘Set volume to xx %’ instead of just invoking the up and down volume commands.
You can get songs you barely remember by saying, for example, ‘Play that famous song from The X Files’
As well as being able to play songs by mood or genre individually, you can also mix and match these up. So instead of saying ‘Play some Chill music’ you can say ‘Play some Bedtime Chill music’ or ‘Play Upbeat Party music’ and so on.
Add a song to a playlist by saying, yeah you guessed, ‘Add this song to my xxxxxxx playlist’
Send a text/iMessage by saying ‘Hey Siri text xxxxxx’ (You can also use WhatsApp among others).
We know HomePod, annoyingly, can only do one timer. But as a workaround for now just use reminders by saying ‘Remind me in xx minutes to do xxxxx’
Another alternative to the one timer situation is to use Alarms instead of Reminders, as you can have multiple Alarms on the HomePod too. Which makes the timers situation all the more bizarre.
Anyway, you can either say;
‘Set an alarm for xx minutes time’ or
‘Set an Alarm called xxxxx for xx minutes time’ or of course
‘Set an Alarm called xxxxx for xx:xx hours’
and it works much the same way.
To further enable/disable/delete/add/edit Alarms on the HomePod manually, go to the Home app and force touch/long press the HomePod icon and select Alarms from the bottom left of the screen.
If you play a song and it’s not by the artist you were expecting, just say ‘Play a different version’ to hear it from an alternative artist.
If you’re listening to things like the News and getting bored, speed things up by saying ‘Play Faster’ Likewise you can say ‘Play Slower’ to take things down a notch.
If you want your iPhone/iPad to be the device which responds to your requests, as HomePod will almost always be the default option if it can hear you, you either need to raise to wake your device, or hold the button to activate Siri on your device first.
Other commands for "Hey Siri" when you're listening to music include:
‘I don’t like this’,
‘Don’t play this again’
‘What song is this’
‘Who sings this’
‘When was this released’
‘Play more like this’
‘Make a station from this’
‘Add xxxxx to Up Next’
‘I like this’
And there’s always the trusty ‘What can I say’ command which will prompt Siri to tell you some things you can do, you can do this more than once for different answers.
Those are just the basics. Otherwise Siri works just like any other iOS device. You can ask it almost anything, get it to control your smart devices and everything else you’ve come to expect. With just a few limitations related to Calendars, having no screen to display information and so on.
*Edit:
Just so I've put all my inane waffling on this into one place, I've integrated my earlier HomePod use tips into this list.
Only because I'm going to direct my wife to it for a read so she can bloody well speak to the thing herself. Instead of asking me to ask it, I kid you not
