HomePod HomePods and Personal Requests not working

[kirbyrun]

I’ve been filing bug reports for over a year now, through multiple OS updates and the switch from iOS 14 to iOS 15 to iOS 16 and I don’t know where else to turn. I'm hoping someone here can help me out.

In brief: Personal Requests on HomePod mini is borked and has been for well over two years, at the very least.

To be sure, as the admin of my family, it works beautifully for me. But when my wife asks any of the HomePod minis in the house to, say, add something to her shopping list, she only gets “You’ll have to turn on Personal Requests in the Home app” from Siri.

(Weirdly, the lone original HomePod we have works fine…)

Well, she did turn on Personal Requests in the Home app. And then she did it again. And again. And again. Over and over because for some reason, she turns them on and then — with no interaction from her — those switches in the Home app just turn themselves off.

Every time. Every single time.

It’s beyond infuriating.

“It’ll be fixed in an update!” I told her.

Nope.

“iOS 15 will fix it!” I swore.

Nope again.

“This new iOS 15 update, combined with the homeOS update, will fix it!” I promised.

And…nope.

Surely iOS 16 will--

*sigh*

I’ve submitted bug reports. I’ve rebooted her phone more times than I can count. I’ve rebooted the minis over and over. I even factory reset one of them, just to see if that would do it.

Nope.

I went nuclear — I removed her from the home in Home.app, then re-added her anew.

And still…nope.

This issue has persisted over multiple updates of both her phone and the HomePods, and even over into a brand-new phone!

I love having a smart home, but my Wife Approval Factor is quickly degrading into a Wife Annoyance Factor.

Has anyone else experienced this and solved it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Itinj24]

I am also getting a random ghost turning off toggles in HomeKit for me, especially the HomePod alarms.

For the personal requests, if you haven’t done so already, have her retrain her voice with Siri. Also try rebooting the network and HomePods in question.

Last case case scenario, which shouldn’t be too much of a pain is to just factory reset the HomePod(s) and see if that helps.

Good luck. A lot of us are feeling pain from HomeKit.

 

[QuietGamer]

It maybe a reach, is there a setting in her iCloud account that may need turned on? Say, something like "allow personal requests". Since she is not the admin she would have to allow the access to her iCloud data.

When I run into these kind of issues following the data trail may lead to the solution.

 

[kirbyrun]

I am also getting a random ghost turning off toggles in HomeKit for me, especially the HomePod alarms.

For the personal requests, if you haven’t done so already, have her retrain her voice with Siri. Also try rebooting the network and HomePods in question.

Last case case scenario, which shouldn’t be too much of a pain is to just factory reset the HomePod(s) and see if that helps.

Good luck. A lot of us are feeling pain from HomeKit.

Unfortunately, I've tried all of those over the past few years of this.

 

[kirbyrun]

It maybe a reach, is there a setting in her iCloud account that may need turned on? Say, something like "allow personal requests". Since she is not the admin she would have to allow the access to her iCloud data.

When I run into these kind of issues following the data trail may lead to the solution.

The Personal Requests toggles are set to On. The problem is that they turn themselves off.