Homepod mini handoff not working

OK EVERYONE, SOLUTION PROPOSAL:

I tried this and got it working.

1.) Start a FaceTime Audio call with a family member or friend (normal call should work too, but I used FaceTime Audio, so I wouldn’t know lol) and talk for maybe 30 seconds or so; it shouldn’t matter.

2.) Click the speaker icon and choose your HomePod mini.

3.) Talk for a few seconds on HomePod mini.

4.) Click the speaker icon on your iPhone and switch the audio back to your iPhone’s speaker.

5.) Try using Handoff to transfer the call back to HomePod mini. Don’t click the speaker this time, try holding your phone on top of HomePod mini.

6.) Be patient, your arm might be there for up to 20 seconds.

7.) The call should transfer. Wait a few seconds, talk, and hold iPhone near HomePod mini again to transfer the call back to iPhone.

8.) Tragically separate with your friend forever my ending the call.

9.) Use a media (audio or video, doesn’t matter) app of your choose and do the Handoff motion back and forth a few times, maybe 3 or so.

10.) Handoff should be working smoothly.

11.) I kindly request that you don’t reply with: “Apple needs to fix this”, “this isn’t ok, it shouldn’t be this hard, or “this isn’t very Apple-esque”, because we all feel the same way and there’s already thousands of other people on the Internet who said literally the same thing. Please just relax and know that Apple will fix it as soon as humanly possible just like with every issue before.

12.) Relax, enjoy some music, and have a chocolate vanilla ice cream cone, because what’s not Apple-esque or human is plain vanilla : )

(Just a joke : ) I know people have preferences)

Hope this helps! If it doesn’t, I’m sorry. Please contact Apple’s best-in-class support team over live chat, iMessage, or phone at 1 (800) MY-APPLE, and an agent from Technical Support will do their absolute best to find a solution that’s right for you.

Hello.

I had this same issue, too. But I found the solution. It's by disabling the airplane mode. Because when you turn on airplane mode, it seems like it blocks some function of the chip, not sure if it's a bug or is its design... So, Make sure you have 1) bluetooth on, 2) same wifi, 3)turn off airplane mode. Hope it can solve your problem.

Furthermore, it starts playing U2 music cause when you don't transferring music from your iPhone/MacBook or other support device, then the HomePod mini will search music automatically from your Apple Music library, and It can do this is because you log in your Apple ID in the HomePod mini.

<< UPDATED>>

Hello. 

I had this same issue, too. But I found the solution. It's by disabling the airplane mode. Because when you turn on airplane mode, it seems like it blocks some function of the chip, not sure if it's a bug or is its design... So, Make sure you TURN OFF AIRPLANE MODE. It doesn’t matter if the bluetooth is one or with the same wifi spot.   Hope it can solve your problem. 

My airplay always worked. Turning on fitness tracking made actual HandOff work 100% for me

Had the same problem with iPhone XS. What helped me was the advice to turn on motion detection. Did it here: General - Privacy - Motion & Fitness - Fitness Tracking. Thank you, KhyberNY!

Make sure u all r updating ur HomePod in the home app. The HomePod itself had an update also

ah crap....I will for sure. It seems to be cooperating with playing on all speakers as well, again fingers crossed, it’s been a bit of a fight and frustrating for sure. I will offer one tip (forgive me if it’s been suggested) but I did try the reset for the Minis manually and then tried plugging it into my Mac, located it in finder and did the reset that way before attempting the Bluetooth idea. Maybe?

After all the test finally all works well for me. am writing this after a week of observation and all works consistently

-handoff feature

-call direct landing on speaker etc

-intercom

Things I tired

1. full wipe off setup phone as new no restore of backup
2. ensure handoff is on airplay settings
3. always WiFi Bluetooth on
4. 14.2 OS update on both
5. appropriate regional settings

So. I think I’ve got this problem just about narrowed down. I at least know where to start looking to find the problem.

my story... i’ve have an iPhone 12 Pro Max. It has hundreds of apps on it. This week I bought the HomePod. The handoff feature never worked on my phone, but worked on my wife’s flawlessly. She has an iPhone 11. This hinted that this seemed to be a problem on my phone, and not the HomePod itself.

I called Apple support. I talked to them for hours. We tried everything...Soft phone reset, complete factory reset of HomePod, network setting reset, removal of HomePod from phone, adding it back to phone, checked all settings, and so on. Everything under the sun was covered and triple checked. We finally came to the conclusion that I needed to erase my entire iPhone and return to factory settings. Ugh!

After erasing my entire iPhone, handoff worked flawlessly. Thus, proving there was no hardware issue with the phone at this point. However, here’s what I shortly found out...

I stayed up all night reinstalling all of my apps back to my iPhone, manually. (took hours). (I didn’t want to reinstall a full iPhone backup in case it had a bug in it. ) I wanted to do everything manually. After finally getting logged back into all my apps, and re-adding my Apple Watch back to my phone, ....poof! Handoff was dead. It’s 100% either an app conflict or the Apple Watch itself causing the handoff to fail. Absolutely not sure which one it is.

I’m going to factory reset my phone again today, and slowly add back every single app one by one. I will test the handoff feature in between adding every single app. Hopefully I will see which app it is that is causing this failure.

Its definitely a software issue . ( in my opinion ) Im convinced this is NOT a hardware issue with HomePod or iPhone.

It could be an issue with adding the Apple Watch or AirPods . But my wife has the Apple Watch and AirPods also, but her phone performs handoff flawlessly. So I am leaning towards that not being the issue.

i’m pretty convinced this is an app conflict. We will see. I’ll keep this board updated after the next multiple hours of work. What a headache!

Apple HandOff is built as a software of the script from “motion and fitness location” code on iPhone. If you have that turned off on privacy location settings , HandOff will not work. It’s like having your phone in airplane mode and expecting it to ring when someone calls you.

it’s not a Band-Aid fix.

A lot of people are confusing what Apple said on that. You don’t need an iPhone 11 or up to use Handoff, you just need iPhone 11 or up for a “magical Handoff experience”. That’s fancy talk for: if you have an iPhone 11 or newer, your iPhone will vibrate in your hand and make a cool screen animation while it invokes Handoff. You can use regular Handoff without the vibration of iPhone 6s and later. You and your room mate must both be sharing the same home in the Home app. If you manage the HomeKit accessories for the two of you, go to Home app>[Your Home’s Name]>Home icon in the top left corner>Home settings>Invite People. Then add your room mate.

Hi there,

probably you’ve just laid your iPhone on to the HomePod. You have to move the phone slowly in the direction of the HomePod, then the iPhone will vibrate and transfer the song (or podcast) to the HomePod.

I hope this will work for you!

I have found else where that this happens if you have 2.5ghz and 5ghz connections on your router. Your homepod may connect to 2.5ghz and you phone maybe on 5ghz. Solution is you turn one or the offer off in your router settings so all devices connect to the same. This has fixed my issue, although will give it a few days

Might be VMWare workspace that has disabled handoff on my iPhone. Phones without this application seem to work after iOS 14.3 update.

I have the iPhone Pro 12 Max, actually 3 of them in the family. Come to find out it was one of the new iPhone 12 Pro Max that didn’t work with the hand off on the homepod mini, it might be the U1 chip or NFC or whatever it uses is not reading the homepod mini. The homepod mini my daughter had didnt work I thought it was a problem with the homepod mini so I returned it and got another one and same problem. Then I reset it and tried it on my phone and it worked, then tried it on her phone again it didnt work. So Im replacing her phone and if it then works with the homepod mini then I know it was something with the new phone. I know its an extreme to do this but what else can it be, her previous iphone 11 pro max worked fine including. We restored her iphone 11 pro max backup to the iphone 12 pro max just like I did for mine and my wife and ours worked fine on the homepod mini with the exception of my daughters. I may be an outlier for my problem but we will see. I know one thing spending that kind of money on the top end iphone 12 pro max 512gb I want it to work like it should. I don’t see what else our problem with the homepod mini could be other than the iphone that we were using. So if yours doesn’t work and if there is someone else with and iphone around try theirs and see if if works on the homepod mini.