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

I have the exact same issue and hopefully the info below will help for clarification of a potential hardware issue your HomePod.

With the popping sound and then the HomePod disconnecting and resetting itself after 2-3 minutes it is best to check on the iPhone, the HomePod been set up with, for a possible hardware issue.

Using your iPhone you can do this by:

1.Going into the Home App, selecting the HomePod that makes the popping sound by pressing your finger onto its icon and it will open the settings for this HomePod.

2.Scroll to the bottom and on the right there will be a grey cog icon (the HomePod's settings) and tap on this.

3.Another menu will pop up with all the various settings for the HomePod but you need to scroll down to Analytics and Improvements and tap on this menu.

4.There will be another menu that reads Analytics Data and you need to tap on this. This menu will then show lines of text of what the HomePod does when running in the background. You need to look at a line that starts panic-full (you should see the date(s) of when the popping occurs and there will be a time recorded which will match up to when the popping sound and disconnect happens.

My HomePod has just done 2 separate popping noises and then reconnected to my iPhone. In my Analytics Data is shows the following:

panic-full-2021-11-18-121115

panic-full-2021-11-18-121434

Those figures that read 121115 or 121434 means time recorded of 12:11pm (and 15 seconds) or 12:14pm (and 34 seconds) which is approximately 3 minutes between each popping noise, disconnect and then reconnection.

No amount of resetting/unpairing with the HomeApp will change this. Sadly, it is a hardware issue and the only way forward is to replace the HomePod if it's still in warranty/covered under consumer law that applies to the country it's been bought from or pay for an out of warranty replacement as long as the HomePod is in stock. If it doubt always seek advice at an Apple Store or call/chat with Apple Support. They are there to help...

This is the correct answer. It is a hardware issue unfixable by software

I have a bunch of homepods, and one in particular pops and restarts very often. When I swap a known good logic board, it still pops. Power supply? Still pops. Microphones or mic board? POP. LED and touch panel???? POP!

The ONLY fix is to replace the amplifier board (more specifically, the amplifier IC that drives the subwoofer).

Yes, if you have not updated to 15.3 yet, I strongly suggest you do so. This seems to be the most stable release yet. I've owned these speakers for over a year and they have never been so stable. HomeKit seems to be a little more responsive as well, although remaining a little buggy... but not even close to as buggy as it was prior to 15.3.

Best of all, I have been using 15.3 since last Tuesday, 1/25/22... I had started hearing the dreaded popping noises randomly across all six of my OG HomePods on a daily basis, several times a day since the original 15/15.1/15.2 update. However, since last Tuesday, I have not heard a single pop from any of the OG speakers (the issue was not apparent on the Mini's). I have not observed any panic logs either. 15.3 definitely (knock on wood) appears to have corrected the popping issue.

yes, this is no harware issue. the last days i played around with my hompods and i loged out for my apple music account and used airplay only from my iphone/mac this solfed the problem for me. the homepods don't get as warm as before.

Update: running 2 HomePods on 15.2 and have narrowed down that it’s not my iPhone or iPad exclusive with the popping cutoff. I was running Apple TV 4K on tvOS 15.2. (I believe that this is the same is that runs the HomePods). Had Apple Music playing and the speaker popped, failed and restarted.

Ive done a complete factory reset on the 2 units and the pop appears to happen in the left channel. I’ve reset both, switched the “L R” on the speakers with the exact same result. Meaning, regardless of which of my HomePods is playing the left channel, the HomePods have the same behavior.

That may seem like the case; however mine was doing that and was not set to lossless. I had changed it from lossless because the speakers would simply go silent after several songs. The popping sound was happening for me on Dolby Atmos. I will say that I “upgraded” to an eero mesh network yesterday from the AirPort Extremes (previously had 3 networked), and I have not heard a single pop since then (fingers crossed). I also have not experienced the dropping out of a speaker in the stereo pair. I now run them on an eero pro 6 mesh network. And, surprisingly, all the speakers recognized the changed network and ask me if I wanted them to join the new one… which they did flawlessly. Again, fingers crossed… but so far, so good… with only a few glitches.

I contacted Apple tech support to essentially report the problem. I don't live near an Apple Store to take my HomePods in, and from what I've gathered, even replacements are experiencing the popping issue.

At first, the person on tech support related she had not heard of the issue and I was the first caller reporting it. I was astonished as I have seen many complaints about it on here and other sites. After some checking she reported that the issue needed to go to a senior advisor as it was being previously reported. I reported the issues to the senior advisor and she seemed to be aware of it and said Apple is working on the issue. As far as I know, Apple does not read these forums. However, in addition to making the call, I'd strongly suggest going to the Apple Feedback forum and report the problem. The more people do this the better!

I would strongly suggest calling Apple Support to report the issue so they know it exists and is not just a few customers. iOS 15 has been pretty buggy on my end. I think part of the problem may be HomeKit, but can't really say that with surety. It just seems that HomeKit lags a bit. I had never experienced the popping issue until iOS 15 - 15.2. And, it would just be very odd that all 6 of my original HomePods would all have this issue if it were not software related. It doesn't happen on the mini's.

has nothing to do with lossless dolby atmos or wifi. i tested everything.

i switched my poping homepod with one of my partners. my partner hooked them up with a apple tv and my poping homepod stoped poping. so that’s the only real fix at the moment.

i was very vocal about the homepod situation on reddit and one of the guys answered this.

Just had another call with support, my case has

now - finally - reached the technicians, they are

now on board and are going to start monitoring my

HomePod logs, they've asked me to continue using

my HomePods as normal but as soon as the

"popping" starts again I have to contact them

directly, they will then collect the data logs and go

through them. For the first time today it was

suggested by support that this is not hardware

related but a software issue! Please guys, if you're

having these issues, get in touch with support and

keep chasing them, we need to get to the bottom of

this, the more of us that raise support cases and get

the technicians involved, the more data logs they

receive, the better chances there are of getting this

resolved.

15.3

Much more stable and responsive all round - AirPlay and HomeKit much better too - acting more like pre 15.0

No pops or panic logs (yet)

👍🏻🤞🏻

i turned off everything possible, siri, location, analytics, logged out of apple music. i use them for airplay only and since then no pop.

hooking them up with an apple tv helps too, a friend had the pop issue and i told him to pair his hompods with his apple tv and since then no pop.

my final fix to this problem will be to sell all my hompods OG/minis and replace them with sonos products.

it’s 3 month now with no fix for this major problem and i don’t believe apple will ever do anything about this. they just don’t care anymore.

the mini‘s are suffering from one bug to another since they where released. i’m really tiered of this bad experience.

more then 1000€ e-waste.

Exact same set of problems as everyone else. My thoughts are when they updated the software to run Spatial Audio / Dolby Atmos / Lossless 24-bit/192kHz the older processors can't keep up. The processors are overclocking (the top of the HomePod will get quite hot) and the overheating will trip the unit to send that 'panic' log response and a power cycle will cause the arc in the speaker making it pop. All to prevent it from overheating and starting a fire. Fine, but I say then don't update them for Spatial/Dolby/Lossless.

I posted a couple of days ago that I had replaced my Apple Airport Extreme network with an eero mesh. I was not experiencing the popping after that; however, when I added a fourth eero to the network, and restarted all my HomePods, the popping returned.

I disconnected the fourth eero, and I continued to experience the popping again, along with random drop outs of one paired speaker.

In my eero app, I can see what devices are connecting to the routers. I noticed that when a HomePod pops and restarts, it seems to join a different router than the other speaker in its pair is on. For example, one accesses the router in my office, while the other accesses the speaker in my basement. I moved one of the speakers to be closer to the other in hopes both will remain on the same router. But even while I'm writing this, the right speaker in my office popped and went out... and I noticed that while it returned to the office router, one of the speakers in the living room are now separated again. So, I'm suspicious that the popping is being caused by the speakers joining a different router in the network possibly??? In addition, I noticed that one of the speakers in the pair is on 2.5 GHZ while the other is on the 5 GHZ. Unplugging and restarting them manually put them both on the same network again.

I have two routers that are hardwired, and one that is wireless.

Mine are still popping and then resetting as well. I'm going to try a hard factory reset of my devices (unplugging and replugging while holding the top - not the Home app software reset) to see if it will flash the firmware and re-download upon connecting to wifi.

I’m convinced it’s a software issue. I have 2 HomePods - one bought many years ago when they first came out and the second in May this year. I notice this problem more often with the 2nd one but it’s also happened occasionally with the 1st one. The only common change has been iOS 15.

(I’ve tried resetting the 2nd speaker and plugged it into a different socket - problem still happens)

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