Homepod disconnects or stops playing music from itunes randomly

Thanks for sharing Bumbeen. I appreciate you tracking this down and reporting to Apple. I haven't messed with anything for a while but your post gives me hope that the root cause is found. I look forward to hear how your next experiment goes!

Bumbeem - thank you so much for sharing this. My HomePod disconnects from iTunes randomly multiple times during the day. My whole family is now working from home with jobs & school. Having the music disconnect like this is infuriating. Please keep us informed as to Apple's response on this. This hard data is excellent. -- Bryan

That's the exact use case I have. iTunes plays a stream and airplays it out to my homepods. I do this solely so that I can have EQ control over the audio. I'm in a teeny tiny apartment and the homepods just blast bass straight through the walls and I can't use apple music streaming direct to homepod because of it. Even the iphone bass reducer EQ is not enough. I have to turn the low end ALLLL the way down in itunes to make it manageable. It's ridiculous there's no EQ option on homepods after all this time.

Haven't heard anything of substance from them. Just "waiting on a response from engineering".

Glad to hear it worked! I left mine running all night as well and homepods were still trucking when I woke up this morning.

The obvious conclusion we can draw from this experiment is that Apple simply doesn't test iTunes against new versions of homepod iOS. Super lame. I would not be surprised in the slightest if it fixes the apple TV issue as well.

This is just fantastic. I strongly believe you have found the root cause. Its concerning and embarrasing that Apple has let this bug exist for so long, and so far has refused to acknowledge. This is what is a real investigation. I have started doubting if Apples engineers are capable of this level of debugging (or interested in doing so). Thanks a lot. I had gone crazy debugging this at various levels and had settled on to write a Powershell script (which didnt work). You have given me hope!

Hi Bryan.

I received your e-mail and the link to the app. And... for the first time in over a year, my HomePods are playing without stopping! I'm so happy I could cry, LOL.

I will send you a proper e-mail reply sometime later tomorrow, once I've had time to do further testing. I haven't fully tested it with both Apple TVs streaming as well, but I have no doubt it will work great. (I'm from Orlando, but I live half the year here in Germany... so it's already bedtime for me right now).

On a quick side note though (based on the last 2 posts): Just yesterday I upgraded my HomePods to 14.1 and immediately did test to see if the problem was fixed, and as Kwoodhouse just mentioned, it wasn't. There was also an iTunes update that hit yesterday. And as usual, I tested that, knowing full well that it wouldn't actually be fixed. And of course it wasn't.

I'll shoot you a message tomorrow.

Thanks! :-)

This pretty much describes my setup as well. I originally bought an iTouch and an AirPort Express for the purpose of streaming my iTunes library down to an amplifier. The ability to control it with the iTunes Remote app is pure joy.

Now here I am years later with an entire audio system of Apple network gear, Apple TVs, HomePods, etc. And of course my family has gone through at least 3 generations of iPhone and iPads. When it works, it is fantastic. My neighbors think it is magic when I control the music library on the deck from my phone.

Why Apple can't seem to recognize or address the issue is beyond frustrating.

The HomePod and Apple TV are marketed as AirPlay enabled devices. They should just work with iTunes, regardless of the platform.

Thanks to everyone for all for the info!

Most of the replies I've seen seem to be about streaming music from iTunes to the HomePods. I'm having lots of trouble with another aspect of my HomePods: I have about a dozen Shortcuts in my iPhone and use Siri to trigger them to send commands to my home automation. I can trigger them 100% reliably from my iPhone, but getting my HomePods to trigger them is an entirely different story.

As an example, If I ask Siri on any of my three HomePods to "turn on flashlight" (which is just a simple Shortcut in the iOS app to turn on the phone's flashlight), Siri will respond "Just a sec...", then several seconds later "Still trying", then another several seconds before "This is taking too long". (The exact responses vary, but it's always the same results.) Usually by the third time I ask Siri to do this, it will succeed and my phone's light comes on. From that point forward, the HomePod works absolutely perfectly every single time. Or, at least, until I let it sit for a minute. Then it's right back to not working.

I've tried every bit of troubleshooting I could find in this thread and elsewhere and haven't had any luck. Is it possible/likely that my Siri shortcuts are getting caught up in the same sort of network issues you're seeing with streaming?

(FWIW, the HomePods and my iPhone are all up to date with the latest non-beta software.)

Thanks again!

warm greetings!

I’ve had the same issue since HomePod is 13.2

ive now tried every HomePod os till 14.2 and I am hopeless that Apple care about this issue.

it’s still an issue.

Brayn May I please try your app out?

Thanks Jim for the reply. In my case I've only got my PC, dining room homepod and living room homepod selected as output speakers. I've just recorded a quick video to show the behaviour. Without touching anything you will see the speakers disconnect/reconnect continually all on their own. Skip to 1.27, 4.52, 19.35 and 22.40 to see the speakers disconnecting/reconnecting.

https://youtu.be/nfvstqfyzcc

I have gone beyond that and used hard wired cat6 to Apple TV and hard wired PC to my router. Something is broken with Airplay. Apple HELP!

Have you tried to play iTunes from a PC?

Lol. THIS. Spot on. Thanks Kwoodhouse.

Agreed on the IOS conclusion. I had a similar result. Thanks for sharing.

Are you streaming with iTunes?