HomePod Streaming music *from* iPhone -> HomePod mini

[s2mike]

Alright, so I'm having some trouble when it comes to streaming music from my iPhone to the HomePod mini. I'm finding that sometimes it works, and most times it doesn't.

When I'm in Music on my iPhone, I tap the AirPlay icon and it beings up my various speakers (HomePod, Apple TV, etc). When I select the HomePod, I find that more often than not it just gives HomePod complete control of the music, as opposed to showing that I'm speaking FROM my iPhone TO the HomePod (illustrated by the "iPhone -> HomePod" AirPlay text as well as the HomePod symbol on my iPhone volume controls.

The other night I got it working for a while, but now I can't make it happen at all. What am I doing wrong here? Sure, most of the time I'd prefer to just give control to the HomePod and use my phone to dictate what gets played...but there are certain times when I specifically want to stream Music directly from my iPhone to the HomePod and can't figure out how to make it happen consistently.

I hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance.

 

[s2mike]

Hmm...after a small amount of testing, it seems like maybe it'll only let me stream from my iPhone -> HomePod when the HomePod has been inactive for a certain period of time.

Still trying to figure this out. I'm not doing anything different - but it does seem to work after I've given up trying and then revisit the issue.


EDIT: Never mind...this seems to be completely random. Woof.

 

[DeftwillP]

Yup. Airplay controls in 14.2 are poop. I would think you'd be able to retain control over your podcast/music/whatever if you wanted to and just use the homepod as a "dumb" speaker but nope.

 

[s2mike]

Yup. Airplay controls in 14.2 are poop. I would think you'd be able to retain control over your podcast/music/whatever if you wanted to and just use the homepod as a "dumb" speaker but nope.

Welp, good to know the problem isn’t something on my end.

Still pretty annoying though. The “hit or miss” random aspect of it is the worst part. I’d rather have it not work at all than to have it happen intermittently.

 

[chabig]

most of the time I'd prefer to just give control to the HomePod and use my phone to dictate what gets played...

That doesn't make sense to me. If sounds like you want to give control to the HomePod but keep control on the phone, both at the same time.

If you want HomePod to control the music, just ask Siri (on the HomePod) to play something, or transfer from the phone to HomePod by holding the phone near the HomePod.

If you want to control music with the phone and just stream to HomePod, select the HomePod as your Airplay output.

 

[s2mike]

That doesn't make sense to me. If sounds like you want to give control to the HomePod but keep control on the phone, both at the same time.

If you want HomePod to control the music, just ask Siri (on the HomePod) to play something, or transfer from the phone to HomePod by holding the phone near the HomePod.

If you want to control music with the phone and just stream to HomePod, select the HomePod as your Airplay output.

Right - that’s the problem.

Most of the time I want HomePod to control the music so I just have Siri to play something, or just use the Music app on my phone to directly play music from the HomePod.

However, the intermittent issues come when I want to control music on my phone and select the HomePod as my AirPlay output. That’s what’s really spotty.

It’s the difference between these two options:

OPTION A: Ask Siri to play music via HomePod

OPTION B: Use my iPhone to stream to HomePod and simply use the HomePod as a “dumb speaker.”

The problem is that half the time I try to go for Option B, it ends up giving control to the HomePod and it becomes Option A.

EDIT: This *seems* to be working:

• Swipe down to access Control Center

• Long press the Now Playing / Not Playing audio platter

• Select “Control Other Speakers & TVs”

• Choose the HomePod platter so that it expands and shows what’s playing.

• Open the Music app - the banner at the bottom of the screen will show that HomePod is the AirPlay output.

• Force quit the Music app.

• Long press the Now Playing / Not Playing audio platter again.

• Select “Control Speakers and Other TVs” again.

• Choose the iPhone, so that the platter expands.

• Open the Music app again - the banner at the bottom of the screen will show that iPhone is the AirPlay output.

• Now you can press the AirPlay icon, select HomePod as the output, and you’ll be streaming from your iPhone to the HomePod as a “dumb speaker” (pictured in Option B, with the iPhone -> HomePod” text to confirm.

 

[s2mike]

Alright - I basically figured it out, and my system that I outlined above DOES work. It’s unfortunate that it involves force quitting the music app so often, but here’s how I understand it:

I currently have 3 devices that can play Music: my iPhone, my Apple TV, and my HomePod. I only have one Music account, so audio can only come from one source at a time. When long pressing the “Now Playing / Not Playing” Control Center platter, it presents my audio output options:

However, it *IS* possible to end up with music that is queued on all three devices at once. Mind you, audio can only come from *ONE* device at a time, but depending on when I was streaming from each device, it’s very possible to have three different Music albums/songs/playlists all queued up and paused on each device:

So, whichever device I select, it will have its own “Now Playing” banner at the bottom of the Music app. If I select “iPhone,” the music app will show that audio is coming from iPhone. If I select “HomePod,” the music app shows that audio is coming from HomePod.

Ignore the Apple TV for this example.

My issue is this:

I have to select HomePod via Control Center (Days of Thunder), then open the Music app and force quit, then go back to Control Center and select iPhone (Brothers on a Hotel Bed), and then reopen the Music app before it will let me stream from my iPhone -> HomePod.

In short, the Music app is capable of having music already “playing” (albeit paused) on each device, and I have to force quit whatever is queued before I can use the iPhone to stream to that specific device. Think of it as if each device has its own individual Music app, so you have to force quit the Music app for each specific device before it’ll allow you to stream from iPhone to that particular device.

This will rarely be an issue for me, but I’m glad that I figured out what I need to do in order to directly stream audio from my iPhone to the HomePod without the queued audio from the HomePod preventing me from using it as an AirPlay output “dumb speaker.”

 

[AJTC]

Thanks for explaining it. This drives me crazy. It should be more obvious.

What’s even more annoying is when the HomePod is in control of the music, after a while it just disappears from the music app while the music is still playing so to use the music controls I have to re-select the HomePod in the music app. If I just try AirPlay at that point it replaces what’s playing on the HomePod with whatever last played on the phone.

This is so unintuitive. I don’t understand how Apple thinks this is a good user experience.

 

[Cassandle]

Thanks for this, I’ve been having the same issue. I have lots of high-res music that I have ripped to iTunes and sometimes want to force my HomePod to play these, rather than it choosing an equivalent from Apple Music.

I find it especially frustrating with my Beatles catalogue. I have the mono re-masters ripped to high quality and I had often found that HomePod would be playing a different version (usually an inferior stereo mix) to what I thought I’d asked it to play from the iPhone.

This fix is really useful!

 

[Dummer-than-dirt]

Thanks so much for this. This has been driving me crazy for seven months. I live out in the country using Verizon for my internet. Every time I tried streaming music stored on my iPhone or iPad to the Homepods, it would come from the cloud Using up my 15G of high speed. Then they slow me down to nothing and the music would stop and start. Not fun. A complicated procedure but it does work. Thank you so so much.

 

[Dummer-than-dirt]

I now like my HomePod purchase. Was very unhappy with them until I found this info.

 

[Dummer-than-dirt]

Today’s software updates (14.3) may have fixed this issue

 

[bsmr]

No - they did not fix the issues.

For me it is really complicated and I loose control over the music... You never know what the HomePod/Apple is doing.

With Sonos system I know exactly what the system is doing. Would really like to use the HomePod.

But first the system has to run without any issues.

 

[840quadra]

I am wondering if this is my problem. Curious if others are having the same issue.

I have a white noise loop that i have been playing / using for years on my main Homepod, however, when I kick off playback via airplay to my Mini from iPhones or iPads, the white noise will stop at random. I use white noise to sleep when traveling, and at home when there is neighborhood activity that may impact my sleep, so I am not 100% sure the timeframe when playback stops. Some nights it works flawlessly, others it will stop multiple times, usually resulting me in waking up.

At first I thought it was because notifications interrupted playback, however when I switched to my older iPhone 7 with zero notifications enabled, it too stopped without warning. I also thought it may have something to do with my wifi, but when I did a test overnight with my home WIFI disabled, it also failed to continue to play the entire night. The situation is frustrating for me as it often interrupts my sleep. I prefer to keep my regular homepod in a different room, however I am enticed to switch back to it as the Mini is just not reliable for whatever reason.

Has anyone else run into any issues like this? Was hoping the recent update would resolve, but it has not so far.