Siri “failed” to update HomePod mini audio as part of HomeKit scene

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Siri “failed” to update HomePod mini audio as part of HomeKit scene

I have had a HomePod for a few years, and for multiple HomeKit scenes I’ve set my HomePod audio to “pause” - such as when the last person leaves the home, or when we start the “goodnight” scene.

Recently, I added two HomePod minis to our setup. I set the HomePod minis to also “pause” in those same scenes. But every time I ask Siri to set the scene, I get a response that “I tried, but the media in your [‘Reading’] scene is not available.” Tapping the scene in Home.app does change my lights, but the tile gets updated with a “Failed” on it.

Do I need to set my HomePod minis up in some other manner? Is this a bug? Something else?

HomePod mini, 14

Posted on Jul 19, 2021 6:45 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Benjamin Chait Author

Level 2

274 points

Jul 21, 2021 6:50 AM in response to Vancouver22

Okay, so resetting HomePods did not resolve this, but it gave me a clue: my original HomePod (not the minis) also started to “fail” on these scenes.

I ended up changing the scene to ‘play audio’ (and selected a track). Then I toggled it to ‘pause audio’ on all three HomePod devices. It now works!

Still haven’t sorted location automations, but one step forward.

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Answer 2

Vancouver22

Level 8

36,324 points

Jul 24, 2021 1:34 AM in response to Benjamin Chait

My automations to play music at a set time no longer works. I add the HomePods but they get taken out. Alarms to play music work though but I wanted to play a few HomePods not just one. This happened before and I fixed it but I forget how. Might have reset them. Restarting is not helping.

I know one thing that messes up my automations, is if I set the big HomePods to default audio on my Apple TV 4K. They refuse to trigger and won’t even run on “test automation”. .

You can try shortcuts. Some have more luck with them.
You could also try using the home app to set them up on a different device, like an iPad or Mac. I’m going to test my iPhone setting them up tonight. See if they work in the morning.
You might also try toggling enable this automation or scene off then back on

The thing is, I will finally fix them and along comes a new software update and they don’t work again! iOS 12 was flawless. I felt as soon as I got a mini things started going awry. I’d like that thing to not act as a Hub

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