HomePod Does anyone else find the HomePod Mini experience frustrating?

[ThunderRoad]

Some people used to find Apple’s “it just works” philosophy really pretentious. I’ve found it to nearly always to be true though. The joy of Apple products for me has been not only their ease of use but the joy of use too. They do the basics so well.

Which is why I’m so frustrated by the HomePod Mini.

I start playing something on my phone, then I’ll transfer it to the HomePod by holding it close. This is a great feature usually, but every now and then it just won’t work. For seemingly no reason.

Then after a while listening, I might want to pause or rewind. Sometimes this works and I can control the HomePod on my phone, but sometimes my phone shows nothing playing while the HomePod carries on.

Then there’s the whole “Home” functionality with the rooms and whatnot. I’m sure this is great for those who have the appropriate tech in their homes but it’s really pointless for someone like me. Is there a way to just completely ignore these features? Even updating the device through this app is a disjointed experience.

Whilst the sound quality is brilliant, I find the actual experience of using the HomePod Mini really frustrating. Does anyone else feel similar? It’s pretty much the only time I’ve felt like this with an Apple product...which leads me to believe I may even be using it wrong.

 

[mikedis]

I start playing something on my phone, then I’ll transfer it to the HomePod by holding it close. This is a great feature usually, but every now and then it just won’t work. For seemingly no reason.

I have the same issue. And with the 14.4 update, it worked the first time I tried it... then never again. The HomePod’s light will gradually grow brighter, but the actual haptics and controls don’t work. And tapping it doesn’t transfer anymore. There’s no handoff for me, at all.

Then after a while listening, I might want to pause or rewind. Sometimes this works and I can control the HomePod on my phone, but sometimes my phone shows nothing playing while the HomePod carries on.

Sometimes I’ll have a playlist going, and after a song ends, it seems to just randomly pause and reset the playlist. I don’t know if it’s an issue with Apple Music or the HomePod, but it’s never happened on my phone.

Does anyone else feel similar? It’s pretty much the only time I’ve felt like this with an Apple product...which leads me to believe I may even be using it wrong.

I’m pretty disappointed with my experience too. Handoff never works, and that’s half the reason I bought it. What’s worse is I’m outside of the return window. Hopefully Apple will replace it. Surely it’s defective... surely Apple wouldn’t sell me a non-working device straight out of the box...

 

[waw74]

Some people used to find Apple’s “it just works” philosophy really pretentious. I’ve found it to nearly always to be true though. The joy of Apple products for me has been not only their ease of use but the joy of use too. They do the basics so well.

Which is why I’m so frustrated by the HomePod Mini.

I start playing something on my phone, then I’ll transfer it to the HomePod by holding it close. This is a great feature usually, but every now and then it just won’t work. For seemingly no reason.

Then after a while listening, I might want to pause or rewind. Sometimes this works and I can control the HomePod on my phone, but sometimes my phone shows nothing playing while the HomePod carries on.

Then there’s the whole “Home” functionality with the rooms and whatnot. I’m sure this is great for those who have the appropriate tech in their homes but it’s really pointless for someone like me. Is there a way to just completely ignore these features? Even updating the device through this app is a disjointed experience.

Whilst the sound quality is brilliant, I find the actual experience of using the HomePod Mini really frustrating. Does anyone else feel similar? It’s pretty much the only time I’ve felt like this with an Apple product...which leads me to believe I may even be using it wrong.

I start playing something on my phone, then I’ll transfer it to the HomePod by holding it close. This is a great feature usually, but every now and then it just won’t work. For seemingly no reason.

The mini and full-size use different methods and hardware, so handoff on the mini couldn't just use the same code as the full size. So it's kinda of a newish feature,
This was just addressed in the versions of software that just came out this week, maybe it will be better? (you should upgrade ASAP anyway, some pretty big security fixes)

Sometimes this works and I can control the HomePod on my phone, but sometimes my phone shows nothing playing while the HomePod carries on.

It's showing you the player for the phone, which is playing nothing. so it's doing what it's supposed to.
sometimes it will automatically change to other active players in your house, but if not you can do it manually. If you go to control center and hit the airplay icon in the music tile in the top right, then "control other speakers" it will show a list of all the devices, you'll then be able to choose the HomePod.

There has to be some sort of logic happening in the background, since if you were playing music on your phone, and someone started playing something on another device, you wouldn't want that taking over the controls on your phone. I think sometimes this prevents the auto-switch.

also once it's selected it this way (Automatic or manually) the Apple Music app on your phone will directly control the player in the HomePod.

Then there’s the whole “Home” functionality with the rooms and whatnot. I’m sure this is great for those who have the appropriate tech in their homes but it’s really pointless for someone like me. Is there a way to just completely ignore these features? Even updating the device through this app is a disjointed experience.

It's used to assign rooms to speakers, so you can say "play music in the kitchen" and your devices will know where to send the audio. you don't have to use it at all if you don't want to, except to access some settings. just set it to auto-update, and you should never really have to go in.

you can also make scenes, that will allow you to set what to play and what volume you want.
so if you always listen to a certain playlist or something in the morning, you can make a scene called "good morning" then all you have to do is say "hey siri, good morning" and she'll play that right thing at the right volume. if there are things you always listen to, this can save you a few words with her.
if you have other airplay speakers in your house, you can also have them join in if you want.
or you can have a scene pause audio, or even just adjust the volume


---
that being said, I do have a full size HomePod, I mainly use it for siri, and to control homekit stuff around the house.
I don't really use it for music,

everything else is sonos.

it generally works better
you can control it from pretty much anything (iOS, Mac, android, windows)
it has dozens of streaming services.
they've also built some pretty decent mesh networking into it, so if you hardwire one speaker, they'll create their own wireless network. (and it has a physical ethernet jack, which is handy)

 

[Horney]

I’m about to return my mini as it’s basically useless. Kept dropping WiFi, what use is a smart device when it spends most of its time without an internet connection? My full size HomePod never has these issues, the mini just seems to be a badly coded bit of kit that has got worse with each update.

The most recent update seems to have killed its ability to connect to any WiFi at all.

 

[Td1970]

Love my minis and full size HPs. Sound great. Easy to use. No problems. Hopefully it stays that way.

 

[Alfie]

For me, the Homepods have been very 'fiddly' devices. When they work as intended they are great....I love them. However, I often find that I need to reboot, restore the OS, give commands multiple times, try handoff 4 times before it works, etc. iOS/Homepod OS 14.2 and .3 were a disaster. Nothing worked consistently. 14.4 fixed a lot of stuff, but I still find the Homepods to be sluggish when given a command. At least they do what I ask about 95% of the time now, which is a dramatic improvement. Hoping for a few more Homepod OS updates to keep refining things.

 

[MrPresident]

I came to this forum to creat a similar post. HomePod mini’s are incredibly frustrating to get to grips with and it is obvious you need to work around their limitations. At the moment it does seem like a half-arsed product, much like the Apple TV remote. I too feel that Apple’s stuff “just works” but I am finding myself saying “no it doesn’t” more regularly.

The proximity handoff feature only works occasionally. A lot of the time I find my self standing over the HomePod with my phone balanced on top, waving it back and forth at different speeds or just re-entering the room before I give up and open the control centre.

The media control centre. That is another mess. Maybe it is just me but it never seems that obvious what device you are selecting music for or how the audio is routed; I am currently playing music in my bedroom, via the kitchen from my phone. As the OP stated, some times it appears on the Home Screen, some times in control centre, some times it’s not displayed at all and you have to look at the Music app or Haptic Touch on media centre to reveal it. As Waw74 pointed out, this is working as intended, showing your phones output which is useless when you’re using it to control an auxiliary speaker!

I find it incredibly frustrating that the HomePod plays music when touched. I’ve found the unit itself to be so sensitive that simply picking up an item in close proximity has triggered the device to play random music! It’s quite irritating, ideally I’d like to be able to disable that function or swap it for touch to Siri so I’m not surprised by random, loud music. Same goes for the home app; the icon sends a random song to the HomePod when touched.

Siri functions reasonably well but occasionally it listens to what I say and then provides no answer! I am however massively impressed with Siri’s ability to hear from almost any where. Whilst Siri is still quite a poor experience, within its limitations you can definitely get use of it.

All-in-all, I think the experience of using HomePods is cumbersome but great when it gets going. The sound quality is no where near what I expected after reading reviews that overhyped the clarity.

Sono’s has been mentioned as a potential alternative but you cannot trust that company after the ‘Recycle Mode’ fiasco. Planned obsolescence creeps into most software updates subtly, but to balls-out tell your customers that the product they purchased is now unusable because new products are available is very troubling. I wouldn’t put my money anywhere near a company who have ideas like that.