homepod makes loud pop and disconnects from AirPlay after upgrading to iOS 15

Mine as well. With HomePod OS 15 my full sized HomePods started making that random popping sound, when they were t even being used. After the last updates to those and APPLE TV I set my HomePods up as default sound. They keep randomly disconnecting and reconnecting to my Eero 6 Pro network, they show up as private devices with a random MAC address that is different each time, there’s now a list of about 8 or 9 in my Eero offline list as this keeps happening. When it does they may reconnect, or one may reconnect and the other will not. This is not happening to my HomePod Mini’s that are also up to date and being used with 4th gen Apple TV’s as well.

Hello hfritts,

We understand your HomePod disconnects while in use. We'd be happy to help!

When your HomePod disconnects, we'd recommend trying the steps listed in If HomePod isn't responding. If after trying each step, the issue continues, we'd recommend connecting with Apple. Depending on your region, you may be able to reach them here: Get Support

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!

Hello Hfritts,

Just to be sure, you were able to successfully perform the last step?

Reset HomePod

If you can’t remove HomePod from the Home app, you can manually reset it to factory settings.

If so, you'll want to follow the guidance under "Get help": If you still have issues using HomePod, contact Apple Support.

Take care!

Yes, I’m on WiFi 5 still

Don’t forget about the Apple recommended WiFi settings - it helped somewhat for me, especially on HomeKit

I get occasional WiFi privacy warnings sometimes but I think that’s got to do with TalkTalk not updating their router updater settings properly yet to comply with Apple iCloud Private Relay (Beta) (limit IP address tracking) servers

But this doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the pops for me

Try Apple’s recommended WiFi router / access point settings?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202068

Just spoke to a senior advisor, who made me feel quite reassured - he confirmed the following;

• Apple does read and act upon the forum where it deems necessary

• Apple is supporting HomePod and for the foreseeable future - the only thing they don’t support is the sale or resale aspects (discontinued)

• Apple formally acknowledged this issue quite recently, which takes it to the next stage of rectification

• Apple are examining customers’ analytics to support the fix required

• Apple is almost certain from the latest reports that it’s a software only issue (not firmware or hardware)

• Apple were aware that the volume inadvertently goes to max when it crashes

• HomePod has its own software now and is not under tvOS

• Apple is working on a permanent fix which will be released ASAP

We all know by now that patience is a virtue (!), but I’m pretty convinced this’ll get sorted fairly soon, and probably once all the Beta’s are out the way…

I'm running IOS 15.2 on a iPhone 13 and a 2020 iPad Pro 11.9 from 2020. 2 regular homepods and 4 minis. I frequently have the following issues with airplay:

• walk more than 20 feet from my homepods or minis and they stop playing (even if they are the control device)
• crackling in regular homepods (I too am concerned about damaging my speakers) when on or off
• random disconnect from my homepods and minis when Apple Music is playing or it will just stop
• crackling followed by loud pop on HomePod mini's out of left channel (regardless of which pair) and then everything stops playing and disconnects

It's a battle among battles. I rarely have to do a full restart or reset, but it does happen. The inconsistent performance reminds me of what made beats pills so awful and unfriendly.

Anyway, that's been my experience with the latest update.

One of the front pair popped and crashed again last night whilst playing on all four (two pairs in one room) using Apple Music lossless 24 bit / 96 kHz - the pair again not linked to Apple TV default output - this last happened 18/12/21

This might be interesting if you haven’t seen it yet, or lost all hope yet…

Noticed a different log appended shortly after the pop (requested or auto retrieved by Apple perhaps)

Seems to me they are looking into this as they said they would, hopefully very seriously and with urgency

Note the date / time of panic log and the other (new) log

Maybe they’re taking massive samples now

What do you guys reckon - have you seen these before?

I don’t think I have and I’ve been almost studying them for nearly 2 months

Hi there Hfritts,

We understand you're able to reconnect to the HomePod again. However, the resource we provided shares several troubleshooting steps that may help with what you're experiencing. We'd recommend giving each step a try and test if the issue continues.

Best!

Hello Hfritts,

Since you've tried each step to try to resolve this issue, we recommend that you contact Apple Support directly. Depending on your region, you may be able to reach them here: Get Support.

Have a good one!

Hi, same problem here in France since the iOS15 update. my HomePod pair has an erratic behavior, sometimes the infamous pop sound, sometimes the pair disconnects or plays separately the same song with a slight delay. This is annoying that Apple stays silent on this issue. We paid for these, they are great but iOS 15 is a pain for the classic HomePod…

Exact same problem. At first I was unable to reconnect unless I removed and re added the HomePod to Home app but as of recent, waiting a bit allows me to stream again. But it doesn’t take long for another loud pop and getting disconnected again though.

I have a mixture of HomePods (6) and HomePod Mini's (4). The HomePods are set up as stereo pairs, whereas the mini's are not. I have had continuous problems with them maintaining sound and all playing at once as expected. For a couple of months, it seemed that Apple had finally fixed all the bugs and my set up played quite well with only the occasional hiccup. Since I updated to iOS 15 everything will be playing fine, and then one of the HomePod speakers will make a loud pop noise and stop playing. Other times, I'll be walking through the house, and recognize that one of the stereo paired HomePods will not be playing while the other is. All too often, I'll be playing music, and it will just all go silent.

This is extremely frustrating, especially when I have guests over. Having to futz around with the stereo system just to get the speakers to work doesn't do well for Apple's brand, I can tell you that much. Having a dinner party where the background music just goes out, or Siri refuses to "Stop" all the speakers when told, or turns up the volume when asked to turn it down, or simply refuses to play on all the speakers when told to, loud popping noises that force me to restart the speakers... seriously? Why not just iron out the kinks before adding new features? Makes me regret investing so much money in them and return to wired speakers, that well, just worked.