HomePod mini play pause lag when paired with Mac mini

Hey, jrqvb8!

If this issue is really making the homepod mini useless for your intended purpose, I'd rather suggest you to return it for now. The HomePod mini supply is currently a bit limited, but I'm pretty sure it will be easily available by the time they'll fix it ... IF this BS ever gets fixed.

Now here's the thing:

I don't want to crush anybody's hopes about this, but as @mrcgrhrdt stated he's got a similar problem with his Sonos speaker. This is most definitely an AirPlay protocol flaw and it seems like it has absolutely nothing to do with the HomePod mini in particular.

If I'm totally honest, this leaves me even more speechless as I'd like to know why Apple didn't fix it already.

Developing such a protocol like AirPlay certainly comes with some testing. Did some project manager or developer just thought "Okay, most actions are having a delay but as long as changing the volume works instantly, everything's fine!"?

This is ridiculous. I'll guess we shouldn't expect big changes soon.

Anyways, have a happy new year everyone!

Well, I've just talked with the support center and I've found the problem...

Video players like VLC, Cisdem, Elmedia, don't have support for Airplay 2. I've tried with Optimus Player, which supports Airplay 2, and everything works fine.

I am afraid this is inherent behaviour of WiFi audio, Airplay 2 merely minimise the sound delay as well as delay the video output to sync up with the sound output. There is no way around it, even bluetooth speakers and headphones typically have a 100ms - 300ms delay.

It seems to be an old problem of airplay 2 technology. It works fine with iPhone and iPad but not Macs. When you choose to play audio to airplay speakers there is always delay like 2 seconds. Unable to watch movies and play games. But if you play video in safari or music app everything is fine. And that's really painful. As I see the problem is still there with new HomePods and new Macs

Because each is streaming at different rates. There’s going to be some lag, especially when you pause or resume play, one stops or starts before the other and isn’t quite caught up.

Try refreshing the page to restart from beginning.

Try quitting the app & restart the Mac

Yes, I still have the lag of two seconds when I hit play or pause, but at least now when I watch a video/music whether it is on Netflix, YouTube, iTunes or VLC. That's a little bit annoying, but nothing like the video being totally out of sync with the audio like it was the case in VLC.

Since I've switched to Optimus Player, I have 0 trouble with that and I can finally use my HomePod Mini to watch movies.

Yep 100% same problem on my M1 Mac mini. It has taken me 24hrs to get the **** HomePod set up and just when I thought I had it working, I try to play a game and everything is out by 2 seconds or so. Really annoying and my wife is getting annoyed with me because I have spent most of Christmas moaning about the present she got me!

I can watch YouTube, iPlayer, Disneyplus via safari all fine albeit with the 2 second lag when pausing. Can only hope they fix this soon.

I got a Sonos speaker recently and when I use Airplay to stream music to it, I have the same issues like the others here:

• Delay with play, pause, skip track
• viewing videos is perfectly in sync

So I think it is an issue with the Airplay protocol, not the devices itself (HomePod, Sonos etc.)

I hope that the engineers are already working on this💪

Heads up!

The issue is clearly related to AirPlay 2. Since the HomePod mini doesn’t really on Bluetooth, the other speakers using Bluetooth don’t have issues.

But i really hope apple will be able to fix. But again, it’s been such a long time that the issue exist that I am sure it won’t be fixed...

I got contacted by Apple Support concerning the lip sync issue which I, too, am experiencing and have a case running. They called, asked for permission to remotely check my computer and Home Pod Mini, which I granted, and checked the profile and registry file (or whatever).

However, it seems that they can give me no immediate solution to my problem, they are probably working on a firmware update. The reason for buying the HPM was to use it as an external speaker, BUT due to the lack of sync issue, I cannot use it during the online training: my students appear like those ventriloquist dummies, and it can get very annoying and confusing. So I wrote to Apple, telling them I will send back the HPM and ask for a refund. Pity though, it looks good and sounds good, but... useless as far as using it as an external speaker during internet conferencing.

Thanks for your response. I was also thinking about returning my HomePod mini but apart from this delay which as we found out seems to be a software issue I think it's a great product with an incredible sound quality for such a small package.

I hope that this gets fixed pretty fast.

I have exactly the same issue. The weird thing is that I started having this issue today. It's been one week I have the HomePod Mini and I've had no trouble so far...

Totally useless yo have the HomePod then, except for the music...

Any solution so far?

Even when I adjust the volume off the HomePod directly from my MacBook Pro it makes no difference...