Auto-Launch + AirPlay = not friends

[Eneco]

Hi everyone,

Auto-Launch is a great feature and I like it a lot. Unfortunately I doesn’t seem to work very well with AirPlay.

If I connect my iPhone to my HomePod BEFORE starting to play music on my phone, Auto-Launch won’t bring up the music app on my watch. Instead I need to start playing music on my phone first and then connect it to my HomePod afterwards, which is a little bit cumbersome.

It this supposed to be this way? Why doesn't Auto-Launch work when my iPhone is connected to an AirPlay device?

 

[Kingcoherent]

Airplay has quite a few irritating features.

 

[waw74]

After typing this out, just realized this post is several months old, but got dug up by someone with a snarky comment, and not much help. almost like they were digging through old posts so they could throw that in.

now back to my original answer.

Apple has made it confusing.

the music app has 2 ways of working, which look and work exactly identically.

• as a music player, outputting to phone's speakers, headphones or airplay
• as a remote for another player such as HomePod or aTV. (you an also airplay from those remote players to other homepods)

the only way to tell which mode you're using, if you look at the bottom of the full screen now playing in the music app, you'll either see "HomePod name" which is remote mode, or "iPhone -> HomePod" which is music player mode sending over airplay.

When you start the HomePod first, you're probably in remote mode, and the watch won't autolaunch since music isn't actually playing on the phone, it's just acting as a remote.