I just got a new HomePod (full sized) from Apple today. I have tried it in dozens of locations around my house and it's remarkable how poor the sound quality is. I am comparing it to a Bose Sound Link Flex that I have been using for over 5 years. I have tried the full gamut of music genres in locations all around my house. In every configuration, the mids sound unbalanced and there's little to no bass. I have the reduce bass setting disabled in the home app. Does anyone have any suggestions I can try before I send it back to Apple? For what its worth, I'm totally in the Apple ecosystem and own every other Apple product. HomePod is literally the last Apple product I had yet to purchase.

Hey folks, been using HomePod Mini since 3 months now. Now, I wanna make use of the HomeKit and get into basic automation.

What would you suggest to start with? Any suggestions on the best and affordable Smart Plug?

Any insights are appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Does anyone know what direction Apple is going with the next Homepod? I am seeing recent videos on youtube talking about how the next homepod will have some kind of screen directly on the speaker or the ability to attach a screen via an arm.

Does this mean Apple is moving away from Homepods acting as speakers for Apple TV devices? Has Apple given up on creating a more powerful Homepod that could be used with multiple homepods in a single room to create a more Home Theater-like experience? I am so confused with the next gen homepods. Any have any insight?

TLDR; Error code -2 received when trying to add any HomePod mini or OG to my home app. About to drop a nuke on my iCloud, any help would be greatly appreciated.

The past few days, I have not been able to setup any HomePods to my home. It started with a new one not joining, I deleted the home thinking something was wrong and now none of my HomePods will join. Each time I'm stuck on 'Setting up iCloud' for about 10-15 minutes and then I get a 'Setup Failed (-2)' error. I spoke with Apple and didn't get anywhere. 

I tried the following steps:

• Turned on ADP (I had it on a few months ago and disabled due to a major keychain issue) and tried the setup. 
• Ensured devices were removed from account.apple.com. I did an immediate factory reset on the device.
• Restored all of the devices on my Mac and attempted setup.
• Unplugged one Eero and had the HomePod in close proximity to my gateway Eero. 
• Modified Eero settings to be as vanilla as possible (haven’t done DNS yet, will try this next). 
• Set up a second home and try to add there. 
• Signed out of Apple ID and attempt a setup. 
•  

I am planning on the next pieces as a last resort:

• Remove all devices in my possession from my Apple ID. 
  • Change ID password. 
• Purging iCloud, attempt to add HomePods and then re-add back items (this will suck). 

Most of you are using or considering using your homepods in stereo pair for a primary viewing TV. I just wanted to drop a note here telling you that it's also great for a secondary TV where you don't do most of your watching.

I have a TV on my office wall which usually plays news, etc. That TV has an older AppleTV on it which the only source for media. I've also had a HomePod Mini on my desk for a couple years. I occasionally watch netflix series etc on it as well.

It finally dawned on me to tell the AppleTV to play audio through the homepod mini. The difference is night and day. It actually sounds like a much bigger audio source than it is. Huge improvement.

I use the intercom feature in a couple of automated shortcuts- eg a morning routine that tells me the weather and any calendar events for the day.

It’s worked fine for the longest time, but the voice has always been a little different to the selected Siri voice (I think it just used the default voice, in my case English Australian).

Last week, I noticed a nice upgrade- it started using the selected Siri voice (Irish) in a nice smooth, natural sounding tone. It was great for a few days.

This week, however it has downgraded significantly- think 90s style robotic text to speech. It sounds horrible!

If I ask Siri a question directly, it will respond with the default voice.

Any ideas why this has happened? It’s possible my HomePods have installed a new beta update, but it’s hard to tell since there’s no “last updated” info as far as I can see.

Considering a pair of minis as desk speakers, for which stereo pairing is critical. But having tried this with a pair of Echoes, I’m suspicious of whether it will work with all media, or just with Apple Music?

I’d replaced my OG HomePod with a gen 2 one as the OG on bricked when I did an update almost a year ago. I put it in the loft and forgot about it. But something popped up on my social feed one day about a company that would repair them.

So I thought I’d try it. Well so glad I didn’t throw it away, as I’ve just got it back all repaired and working perfectly. So happy.

If anyone in the UK had something similar have a look at Howard Conrad. Cost £99 for them to repair it.

Just thought I’d let other UK people know.

My HomePod (2nd generation) doesn’t let me control my Meross Smart Plugs anymore. If I say „Hey Siri, turn on the living rooms light“ either no response at all or „Wait a second“ pops up.

How can I fix this? I already unplugged the HomePod and logged myself out of my iCloud account on the HomePod.

If I use the same command on my phones Siri everything works fine.

Hello, good people of the HomePod sub Reddit. I just picked up a new HomePod. I have two OGs already. If I wanted to create a stereo pair, should I keep the two OGs together, or does anyone see any problem with combining an OG with a GEN2 for use as a stereo pair for my TV?

Hello all,

New to the subreddit, I am happy to have found it. Great advice here thus far I noticed.

I been having an issue with Siri in all HomePods in my house. I have setup a home in the Home app, and I have added my wifi into it as an admin so she has full control over it like me. When I setup the HomePods a few years back, I turned on personal requests ON when doing the setup. Well every time my wife says “hey Siri, add rice to my groceries list” siri responds “who is this?” My wife tells Siri its her, siri responds “I don’t recognize you, try turning on voice recognition on the home app”

We have done that already on settings, in her device, and still nothing. I have reseted from factory all homepods and still no fix for that issue. It seems Siri is only able to recognize my voice.

Am I missing something?

Thank you

Hey. Has anyone encountered this?

Setup a pair of stereo AirPod minis as output for Apple TV but now my remote keeps connecting and disconnecting constantly. Basically made my remote useless.

Is this an issue anyone else has ever found?

Any fix? Or suggestions?

Having to use phone now which is ok but kids can’t use TV themselves

Has anyone gotten their HomePod to deliver chatGPT conversations? Hoping anyone can casually ask chatGPT a question via a HomePod.

The TCL 55C735 TV is AirPlay2 and HomeKit compatible. Ok so that it receives information/music/video from an eDevice but can it stream sound to a HomePod 2?

I know this is the case but I am just looking for confirmation especially since I'm not entirely sure of the verbiage but when I put my HomePod next to the wall and crank it all the way, it doesn't sound as loud as it does when it's out in the open. I know the HomePods have a plethora of mics to monitor sounds for distortion, so is it doing that and can you disable it just too hear the reverb off of the wall ? I'd say it plays at about 70-80% capacity when against a wall or very, very close to it but out int he open, we'll say 100%.

So for context - the moment I have a single 2nd gen HomePod and 2 HomePod minis all in the same room.

The 2 minis are synced to an AppleTV in a stereo pair - and I was hoping that until I get a second HomePod gen 2 to link with the Apple TV instead, I can just play audio to the stereo pair and then airplay to the larger HomePod and have it work as seamlessly - and it works for like 2 minutes and then there comes a frustrating buzzing noise from one (maybe all) of the speakers and things become inaudible or, if I’m airplaying from Spotify on my iPhone to the 3 speakers, the music becomes choppy or stops altogether, has that been anybody else’s experience?

Also worth noting that I had this issue even before updating to iOS 18 and still have to today

Maybe some one can help me figure this out. I ask Siri to play an artist that has multiple albums full of music on apple music. Homepod plays one song from that artist and then continues to autoplay random music - often artists I have never heard of. How do I turn autoplay off? Nothing works - I can turn off autoplay in apple music on my phone or tv, but not homepod. What am I missing?

Another anomaly i have recently discovered is this - I have a scene for the morning to turn on some light and resume playing any music that was playing before - homepod resume music option. I set it to resume, test it, works and then the next morning when I run it it starts playing some very specific album - not resuming what I played last and when I check the scene it is not resume anymore put play and that album. How is that possible?

Anyone else encountered these issues or have any ideas how to solve them. Throwing homepod out the window is starting to seem like a solid option to me.

After a lot of deliberation (and great advice from this community), I went ahead and purchased the Samsung 990C and a pair of HomePod Gen 2s to compare. Spoiler alert: It’s not a fair fight! The Samsung 990C (with its soundbar, subwoofer, and two rear speakers) is the clear winner—and the setup I’ll be keeping. The depth, clarity, and full surround sound experience from the 990C is just on another level.

That said, I was really impressed with the HomePods. For just two standalone speakers, they deliver some fantastic sound—way better than I expected. If I were comparing the HomePods to a single soundbar without the extra sub and rear speakers, the HomePods would have taken the crown. The sound they produce is incredibly rich.

If a full soundbar system isn’t in the cards for you, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend a pair of HomePods. Even in my less-than-ideal setup (tucked between two bookshelves), they sounded great and managed to be surprisingly immersive.

Big thanks to everyone who shared advice and insights along the way—it really helped!

Note: This pic shows two HomePods Mini’s that I already owned prior to my experiment. But it does demonstrate the challenging setup that the HomePods still performed really well in.

I mostly use my homepod mini for airplaying my youtube videos but it is causing many problems lately.

1. When i pause a video then video pauses but audio keeps playing.

2. When i start a video then on mobile speaker video plays fine but when i switch audio from speaker to homepod mini then video starts to buffer or its video quality reduces drastically to very low and some times that video crashes and black screen shows up on that video with ""something went wrong"" written on screen.

3. Most of the time normal youtube videos work fine but which videos i have dowloaded in youtube library didnot open on airplay but works fine on normal speaker or bluetooth speakers.

Am I crazy? is any one else experiencing this? It was not like this before.

Hi all

Just got my HomePod mini and my experience is.. less than ideal.

It seems all the apps I’m playing from are using airplay 1. Spotify I understand why, but AirPlay from Apple Music also seems to be using version 1. When I press pause it takes like 5 seconds to respond. Googling suggests that this means it’s using AirPlay 1 - is there a way to tell? How can I make it use AirPlay 2?

Thanks

Past three or four days i haven‘t been able to control my lights, set alarms or do anything else pretty much with my homepods. I either receive no Feedback or siri tells me she needs a second or moment and ends up doing nothing in the end. I can control everything over my iPhone so it can‘t be the connection. Restarting didn‘t help neither did resetting them completely. Been relying on homepods for controlling everything so really at a loss here and pretty much ready to toss apple out of my smarthome setup. Any one else having the same issues and maybe even a fix?

The other day I was listening to music connecting my phone to the HomePod and the second HomePod was constantly hiccoughing cutting in and out while the other one was working fine…. I tried all three Wi-Fi networks in the house still had the issue.

Does anyone else seem to have the same issue I’m having… I’m guessing it’s 18.1 update causing this

Hello,

My roommate and I just moved into an apartment together for the university year and I gave her access to my homepod by adding her onto the shared home.

The problem is, while she can tap her iPhone to play music, if she uses Siri on the homepod to play music, Homepod treats it like I would’ve asked, and uses my AM account, so if I’m out and about and i’m listening to music, it’ll pause mine, since I have an individual student account with AM.

How could we go about this? Would turning on the recognition of voices work? This feature is off for both of us right now. How can I have Siri use her Apple music account when she makes the requests?

Does anyone else have issues of Siri ignoring commands and doing nothing without giving any feedback?

Calling all the people who have the gen 1 HomePods. I’ve got a question. Would you recommend avoiding putting the HomePods behind the tv pictured above like to the back left and right or would you recommend getting mounts to put them onto the side of the entertainment center, or would the sound still sound “good” (heavy on those “”) Or any other opinions y’all got on what we should do, let me know!

Thanks

So Im using Appletv with my new bought Homepod mini. Everytime when I airplay a video from my Photos app, the audio either reverts back to my tv default speaker without asking me/setting up or straight up delay it to my HomePod. So much for the ecosystem.

Basically if: Appletv builtin App > HomePod mini : No delay

iPhone Video > Airplay to Appletv > audio is then output to HomePod mini : Choppy, stuttering delayed audio

How is this even acceptable? Im not using a third party speaker or software either. Everything involved here is within the “ecosystem”.

Sounds like I need to connect to a speaker via HDMI eARC for 0 delay.