Homepod disconnects or stops playing music from itunes randomly

So no dice on turning off the homepod features, however I have found a pattern in the packet capture correlated with the failure. I no longer think this is an issue with the homepod, but a problem solely with iTunes.

Every 30 seconds, iTunes sends a TCP message to homepod port 7000 with an OPTIONS message that provides cseq number, user agent, instance ID, and a remote ID. Between these messages, the homepod will send a TCP Keep-Alive to my PC from port 7000 every 6 seconds. After 4 of these, iTunes sends the options message.

When the issue occurs, that 30 second interval TCP options message does not get sent. That's why the other poster was encountering the issue at the 28 second mark each time. That is the refresh interval for this options message.

We can see in the packet capture, the TCP fin message comes as soon as the 30 second interval passes without the options message being sent from iTunes:

This leads me to believe that it might be possible to spoof this options message to the homepod using a 3rd party tool, therefore keeping the stream alive even when itunes fails to send the options message itself. That will be my next task.

I have had this same issue with iTunes and airplay to Homepod. 28 seconds into a track the sound stops followed by the "-" symbol next to the speaker in the list of connected devices. The sound comes back about 8 seconds from the end of the track and goes into the next song just to repeat the same. This does not happen 100% of the time but it is very common and the timing is always the same. You'll see in the attached picture all other Airplay devices are humming along. Only the office speaker has the "-" which is my Homepod. If I click on the minus, the sound comes back only to go back out 28 seconds into another song.

I have no bandwidth issues (Link rate is 866 Mbps to the Homepod). I've reset the homepod multiple times, restarted router, computer, etc. I've even flashed the bios on the off chance that something weird was going on there. The issue persisted.

I decided to try a brand new Homepod. It was on version 11.2.5 out of the box. After set up, I did not update it. Guess what...it played perfectly for over an hour. VICTORY! .......Unfortunately, it would not stay connected to the network when it was idle. I had to unplug it then plug it back in to get it to reconnect. I decided to update to 13.3.1 in hopes of correcting the connectivity issue and everything working fine with playback.

After updating, two tracks into playing on 13.3.1, the infamous 28 second "-" symbol returned. The issue is with 13.3.1 (or a prior release).

My setup is iTunes streaming from PC to multiple Airplay compatible devices with an Orbi mesh network. Music is a mix of my own library as well as Apple Music. The music type playing has no bearing on the issue. I've recreated the issue both ways. The only common factor is 13.3.1.

It's also important to note that I can play from my phone to the speaker with no issue. The problem here is that the speaker "takes over" the playlist. A bit after starting to play, I can no longer skip or control from iTunes on my phone. I have to open the Home app to control the playback. This is with hand off to Homepod disabled. This is one issue I've not wasted time troubleshooting but thought I'd mention it.

I spent a LONNNNG time with Apple support and not only did they have me recreate the issue for them on Homepod they had me experience the same issue on airplay through AppleTV. They acknowledge there's an issue and they are aware. Let's hope for a resolution soon. Best advice is to contact them and go through the motions so they can gather data on this issue.

What's up ya'll. So I just opened a case with Apple on this issue. Been bugging me for months and I'm just now starting to troubleshoot in earnest. When I perform a wireshark capture on my PC while airplaying from itunes to homepod, I notice I Get a TCP FIN from port 7000 on the homepod back to my PC right as the audio stops. iTunes continues to send the UDP audio stream to the homepod for some time however, and is then flooded with ICMP destination port unreachable messages. Eventually the homepod will send a TCP Reset from port 7000 and that's when itunes stops.

Since this does not happen with my iphone airplaying to the homepod(and I mean local airplay from my phone to homepod, not handoff). I am getting the impression this is a bug in the airplay server on the homepod and it is only exposed due to the way airplay is implemented in itunes. This is backed up by the success some people have had with using airfoil instead of itunes. Perhaps if we could compare the control data from airfoil vs itunes we can identify the discrepancy and isolate the specific cause of the failure.

Regardless of all that, I want it to work with itunes, so my next step is going to be disabling everything possible on the homepod to see if that helps.

Hey guys, so I don't seem to have the skills to spoof the options packets. But I did find a workaround that suffices for homepod if you've a spare PC(or a virtual machine) to run iTunes, might work for apple tv but haven't tried that.

Basically all you need to do is change the volume by 1% every 25 seconds. This sends traffic on that port 7000 therefore keeping the TCP stream alive regardless of whether or not iTunes sends the OPTIONS message like it's supposed to.

I scripted this task with autohotkey on a spare laptop. I feel like there's a better way to do it so you could run it on your main PC in the background but I'm not an expert on autohotkey.

Loop {

WinActivate, iTunes

MouseClickDrag, Left, 306, 20, 307, 20

Sleep, 25000

WinActivate, iTunes

MouseClickDrag, Left, 307, 20, 306, 20

Sleep, 25000

}

All this does is move the volume slider in itunes by one pixel to the right, waits 25 seconds, then moves the slider to the left by one pixel, repeat ad infinitum.

Now my packet capture looks like this:

This never gives it the chance to close that TCP connection on port 7000, and 1% volume change isn't enough for me to even hear.

Doug, I am guessing that the older versions of the homepod or apple TV software had a longer timeout than 30 seconds and that's why the issue isn't present there. So much for whole Apple ecosystem "all our stuff works well together!" idea. Though I guess iTunes on windows has always been the black sheep of Apple software.

I'm supposed to hear back from apple today on my case, but I have zero faith that they'll fix it any time soon.... It's been broken for months so it's clearly not a high priority for them.

This has plagued me for months as well. But today I did two things that must have helped, because the HomePods have stayed connected and playing music all day. I send music from my MacBook Pro to four HomePods and two older Apple TV's connected to speakers.

So first, I separated my Wifi nextwork on my Linksys Velops to a separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz network. Everything is my house is now connected to the 2.4 GHz network. I'm not sure this is part of the solution, but I thought I'd mention it.

What did seem to work though was NOT using Airplay with my older Apple TV's. If I only check the four HomePods, they stay connected. They've been playing all day today, when normally they would disconnect (all at the same time) after a minute or two.

There are probably more combinations I can try to circle in on the cause, but for now I'm just enjoying the HomePods staying connected.

Storrm68 - You situation is similar to mine, though the music is coming from my MacBook Pro to HomePods and Apple TV's. And you may have tried this, but just in case, what turned out to be my problem was the Apple TV's being used for Airplay at the same time as the HomePods. Once I unchecked the Apple TV's as Airplay speakers, the HomePods stay connected. And I have some HomePod Mini's now, that also stay connected. So it's still a bug that the HomePods and Apple TV's don't Airplay well together, but if this works, you can still at least use your HomePods.

Bumbeen/Bryan debugged the issue and fixed the issue respectively. Huge respect to both of them. Again, shame on Apple.

Please refer to the post from Bryan above.

Download this utility so that Airplay stack continually maintains connection between iTunes and HP.

http://www.loseyourmind.com/volume-adjuster-for-itunes.aspx

@MK

No, the issue has been improved ever so slightly as it tends to not lose synchronization between the windows iTunes player and the speaker. I have noticed an improvement from the last version of the HomePod OS from the update but, it’s still cuts out on occasion.

A previous poster has suggested disabling the entire 5 GHz side of one’s network and thus force the HomePod to use only the 2.4 GHz band. While I find that suggestion rather silly and especially disabling half of my router a waste of my money… there may be some merit to part of his suggestion.

I will recommend that you set your iPhone or iPad to the 2.4 GHz section of your Wi-Fi network and then reset your HomePod. Then, use that iPhone or iPad to set up your HomePod to use only the 2.4 GHz portion of your router.

I do realize that the 5 GHz band is better at short distance and is far more efficient… But the 2.4 GHz band is more reliable and less capable of losing the timing packets and/or timing signature that is required to keep the HomePod synchronized with the player.

This is an experiment I’m going to be trying in the next week or so… I’ve been so busy at work that I’ve had no time to tinker with anything at home!

Once I have completed this experiment, I will report back here to give out my findings.

if you do this before I do… Could you please report back and tell us what you have found?

Okay, I've now had more time today to thoroughly test Bryan's app, and it works perfectly. Music has been streaming from iTunes to all of my devices for several hours now without a single problem. And it's the first time since summer 2019 that I've been able to do this. :-)

A little background (not that it's important, but may be helpful to know for confirming testing): I have a fairly elaborate setup. Throughout my home, I stream music to 3 different Apple TV devices (for the music to play through the TVs and also through the attached subwoofers, and to also have a visual display on the TVs of the music playing)... plus 5 different HomePods throughout the home... plus 3 different Libratone Zipp Mini 2, rechargeable-battery speakers, one in each bathroom. (They sound great and I like not having to plug in a speaker when it's sitting on a bathroom counter). Plus, also having it play thru my monitor's attached speakers on my laptop setup (directly from iTunes). So, all in all, there are 12 streams to simultaneously play.

Ever since this bug occurred, I could of course still stream music to all the speakers from my iPhone or iPad, however this is not the best option for me. Since I'm working all day in the home office (on my main laptop with large monitor), it's much easier to control everything there from iTunes. Plus, since I have numerous speakers and need to control volumes separately for each, it's a real pain to do this on the iPhone or iPad since the speaker list that pops up is so ridiculously tiny. It's way too frustrating to control all the speakers that way. (I can't believe they haven't made this box much larger in subsequent versions of iOS).

Over the past year I have wasted way too many hours trying to debug this problem on my own. I've played with my wifi settings... tested a different laptop... tried switching between 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz... played with ipv6 vs ipv4 settings (which by the way, this is another issue that doesn't seem to ever go away with iTunes, but that's a whole other story, LOL)... tried resetting the Apple TVs and HomePods numerous times... disabled firewall and security settings... messed around with iTunes Match... signed up for Apple Music... turned off Bluetooth... messed around with Home Sharing... turned off nearby devices thinking maybe they are causing interference... and the list will go on and on, LOL.

So, it's nice to finally know the real reason, and to finally have a (temporary) fix for it. However Apple should be ashamed of itself for the way they have treated this issue. I wanted so many times to just say F*** Apple and switch to a different system, but I'm too deep in Apple's ecosystem at this point to really do that.

I'd like to send a HUGE thanks to Bumbeen who finally got the root of the cause... and to Bryan who create the small app as a temporary fix (until Apple finally corrects it themselves, which I doubt will ever happen). Thanks guys!! :-)

The other network tweak to try (even with wired/ethernet connection) is to assign a static IP address through your router settings. I have used this trick to help my Apple TV remember that the Homepod is the audio output device (it works most of the time). It might help with other Airplay issues (bugs).

You’re missing the point with that advice. Of course it’s going to work on one or the other when you checked. Dual Bands cause the signal to keep jumping from one to the other , it will always try to find the higher speed. Hence these intermittent disconnections as it does this.

Mine was doing the same thing on Dual Bands until I disabled the 5G from being the default. I can still use it, it comes up as a choice to connect to. The lower speed though is actually more favourable for a larger area and going through walls etc.

The issue was introduced after 11.2.5 somewhere. I have had three separate HomePods all starting with 11.2.5. All three streamed fine but would lose network connection when "idle" under this version.

Two of the three were updated to 13.3.1 when the iTunes drop issue started happening.

One of the three was updated to the latest release, 13.4.8, and did not fix iTunes drop issue.

It's an iOS issue (or I guess TVOs now). It started somewhere between 11.2.5 and 13.3.1 or in 13.3.1 itself.

For those wondering, I did not buy three HomePods. One was a purchase/return when I realized it was an OS problem and the third was a replacement from Apple asking me to try a new HomePod.

I have called in numerous times to support. I have narrowed the issue to IOS 13. (I am an Apple Music subscriber) iTunes not only disconnects from HomePod it will disconnect from ATV as well. I installed TVOS 12 on an ATV to test and it can play for days without disconnecting. Our only hope is the issue will be addressed in IOS14.

I seem to have overcome a related "connection" problem with my Homepods by giving them each a static IP address in my router's settings. Same for my Apple TV. Dynamic IPs might be confusing the system.

It probably doesn't matter which service you disable. 2.4GHz has the greater reliable range, 5GHz the greater speed. Having both active seems to leave HomePod the option to hunt for the best service between the two and fail in its primary function of playing music.

tt2