HomePod Mini keeps disconnecting

bgmeek, I tried your solution this evening and was quite encouraged...for about an hour. Then the connection died and the wifi disappeared...again. This has been happening only since the latest software update applied to the homepod minis. (These are new, by the way, just acquired in the past month.)

Now I have rebooted my modem for the nth time and have 4 lovely black little orbs around the house as a reminder to avoid Apple hardware in the future.

I cannot tell you how much Apple hardware I have personally seen off to the recycling dump which has failed just after the warranty has expired.

"It just works."

No it doesn't.

I tried @bgmeek's suggestion around a months ago, and it definitely helped, but it didn't 100% cure the problem:

I have 6x HomePod Minis around the house and 2x HomePods (version 2) in stereo, and had one incident were the HomePods (not the minis) disconnected (one by one with seconds between). They were "connected" to my Apple TV at the time, so I used my remote to enter the Control Center and click on the HomePods pair, and attempt to untick the speaker. It then unticks for a few seconds, and then automatically ticks them back on.

They have worked since.

Worked well for me too.

Have had occasional dropouts for some months - and more frequently the last week.

I have Unifi (mesh) wifi and tried resetting after altering iPhone wifi as mentioned. Works perfectly again!

This has been going on for a number of years, at least since the Minis could be stereo paired anyway. I got mine just as that was being introduced.

In my case I regularly had one speaker (the RH one) disconnect from the stereo pair after a short time of playing anything on the TV (not music though, it only affected movies etc.). It would cut in and out during the time it was playing.

I have seen, and contributed to a few threads on the matter over that time, which I can't find now.

However, there have been many suggestions to fix it, or at least 'workaround' the issue.

I was never convinced by the Private WiFi Address address trick. I thought it would work for a while, then the same issue would eventually crop up again. That's a device specific setting anyway, it's not even available on a desktop device.

I also tried many other tricks, restarts, resets, reinstalls and so on. Until I got to a fully manual IP address setup, and private stuff disabled, and still the issue kept cropping up. I tried all the known suggestions I could find.

Eventually It would remain stable for a while, after a few sets and restarts could be a few weeks if I was lucky. But it was never clear what actually sorted it at any time.

Then iOS 17 came about, and after that I have everything reset back to defaults, my DHCP server is auto, Private WiFi Address is enabled on my iPhone and iPad. Although I do use CloudFlare (1.1.1.1) for my DNS settings.

Since its release last year I haven't (yet!) had a single drop out.

That would suggest to me that we have just been fighting a bug all this time, and it might be that Apple have finally fixed it. It's certainly not unknown for possible bugs to suddenly disappear after an update (it used to happen a lot after supposed 'security' updates).

Anyway, that's just in my own experience here. Perhaps try just resetting everything back to default, and start afresh there. YMMV applies as always :-).

Cheers.

I have seen comments elsewhere recommending that Homepods and Homepod mini speakers all be communicating with the same main wifi router, rather than their respective mesh satellites. Connecting to a mesh satellite throws them "off of their game".

apple tv airplay error: unable to connect to HomePod. You can switch to TV speakers in Settings

after using my paired HomePods as sole audio source for my Apple TV for quite some time, today my apple tv reports "unable to connect to HomePod. You can switch to TV speakers in Settings" error.

during the hour or so of troubleshooting, another error showed up at least once as well: "Apple TV couldn't make HomePod the default Audio Output. Try connecting your Apple TV and HomePod speakers to the same wireless access point, or enable IP aliasing on your router".

trouble shooting attempts:

-reset the HomePods

-Reset the apple tv 4K

-Reset my wifi router (Xiaomi)

reset my iPad reset my iPhone

« The two HomePod mini and the Apple TV are set in the same room on home app »

Also I tried to pair my HomePod Apple TV iPad iPhone ... to 5ghz wifi band, didn't work so I tried on the 2ghz, same story didn't work.

i tried to disable « private wifi networks on my iPhone and iPad » Setting -> Wi-Fi Name (i) -> Private Wi-Fi Address OFF, also didn't work.

my new IPad Pro, iphone, can stream to the HomePod pair with no problems.

I also tried to update to iOS 17.5 beta and tvOS 17.5, didn't work.

I can only use the two HomePod with AirPlay. All those problem started with the HomePod os 17.4 update.

thoughts? Any solution? They worked fine since 1 vear.

Solution by bgmeek worked for me. I worked for a month with Apple support online, on the phone and in store with no solution. Replaced my HomePod minis and still had the same problem. Tried bgmeek solution and voila!

After changing my WiFi back to a single router/access point, I’ve had no issues at all.

I certainly believe now that has more to do with this than some of the settings recommendations. I tried so many things without success, such as the revered Private Address fix, which never worked for me at all.

Ditching my (admittedly budget level) Mesh system, and reverting to a base WiFi router seems to have been the fix for me. I’d even tried using fixed IP addresses, amongst a few other possible tricks, but that didn’t work either.

I had tried using a second router setup as an addition WiFi access point (using the same SSID and p/word), but that still had the HomePod dropout issues.

I’ve been using just the main router for the WiFi for a few months, and haven’t had a single issue with the HomePods dropping out.

However, as I need a stronger signal in the garden for the summer months, I still need something at the other end of the house. I’ve now setup the spare router using a separate SSID, and it’s still good so far. It needs manually connecting to, but for the occasional time it’s needed, that’s fine.

So, it seems to me that the most likely possibility here is when the HomePods might connect to different WiFi access points. That appears to be the main thing they really don’t like.

I read, "Apple, 'sell' us what gear we need to get this working."

Home pod is such a good product Idea, but lacks the software for a viable product. I feed bad for those, like myself that had trust in Apple to produce a plug&play product, which has cause countless hours of frustration. I don't want to reset my homepods for the X time... but here we go.

Vancouver22 wrote:

I tried this the other day but it made things worse. All sorts of bizarre issues. Mind you I did not reset the HomePods afterwards. I always hesitate to reset them because they can be difficult to set back up again! I’ll try it again when I have a free day to go through this ordeal. I have 9; 4 OG, 2 Gen 2 and 3 minis. The stereo pair with Apple TV 4K is flawless. I’ve had them since they first came out and they were good until around iOS 13. Maybe I have too many of them?

I'm revisiting this a week later because of your statement that turning off the Private Wi-Fi Address feature 'made things worse'. You generally know what you're doing, so people will dismiss the 'Turn OFF PWFA' advice because of this report. Nonetheless, there are many reports of HomePod mini connection issues clearly up after turning the Private Wi-Fi Address feature off and redoing the HomePod setup. This current thread on this forum, for example :-)

Apple's presumably accidental bug here is that the HomePod mini will use a 'private' MAC address based upon the settings on the iPhone that set it up with Private Wi-Fi Address turned ON (Apple's default setting). Unfortunately, the HomePod isn't an iPhone and it doesn't seem to retain this 'private address' forever as long as it remains connected to your home SSID. Reports indicate that it may use a new address with every restart or cold-boot (including every automatic software update - note how people often blame the latest software updates for their problems).

Your brief experiment of turning off the Private Wi-Fi Address feature merely restored your iPhone's hardware WiFi MAC address, which would make your DHCP server assign a different IP address to your phone. Assuming you at least restarted the HomePod minis (without the hard-reset), they probably came up with new addresses as well. Suddenly every device on your Home Kit needs to learn that their hub isn't where it was a few minutes ago.

Cheers.

mick2001 wrote:

There is no such setting in WiFi. What do you propose instead of this.

Sorry, I thought the following paragraph was clear about where the setting is (under the 'info' symbol next to your network's name in iPhone Settings):

Settings --> Wi-Fi --> [Your Home(Pod) Network] > (i) > "Private Wi-Fi Address" = OFF.

NOTE: This will cause a "Privacy warning". You can ignore this. There's no risk; it's your network.

You can read more about the Private Wi-Fi Address feature in this Apple Support article: Use private Wi-Fi addresses on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch. The first paragraph tries to justify this so-called feature by vaguely suggesting that a nefarious someone or evil org could potentially see the recurring presence of your phone's hardware address across multiple public wifi networks.

It's silly! It's a classic tech story of a "Solution in Search of a Problem". Every iPhone user running prior to iOS 14 has ignored, or still ignores, this possibilty (I don't accept it's a 'threat'). Likewise Every Android phone, etc, etc, etc! I've searched a bit, and couldn't find any reference to any hack, exploit or even any instance of anyone caring enough to sift through public-access network data about MAC address movement.

Factory reset all HomePods and set them up as if they're new with an iPhone that has had Private Wi-Fi-Address set to OFF for the HomePod's network SSID.

I have the same problem. Tried everything with 2 different routers, two Apple music accounts and so. Nothing worked. I happens with two homepods mini (one per generation) connected individually or as a pair - Music stops, mutes, pauses, also the connection between the home pod and the iPhone controls goes lost with a "Connecting..." message. It's driving me crazy.

I do have an Aqara Hub M2 (wired) in the same room.

Plus 2 smart switches, 1 temp sensor and one smoke detector. All Aqara.

• I had a Firmware update pending for the hub, I installed it but didn't work.
• I move the hub to Matter (beta) - Didn't work.
• I unplugged the hub - the problem persisted.
• Removed batteries from both Aqara switches, Aqara temp sensor and unplug the Aqara hub. - It worked for 20 mins and music stoped again.

Vancouver22 wrote:

Can I just turn off private wifi on my iPhone?

then should I reboot my wifi for good measure, before resetting HomePods and setting up with iPhone in its new no PWA state?

I don't know. It's conceivable that Apple coded a means of pushing network setting mods to the HomePods, but the mere existence of this PWA bug makes me doubtful.

What I don’t get is why they work so good using Apple TV 4K.

I suspect that if the 'pods are configured as the default audio output for the ATV4K, they know about that relationship, so whenever they restart using a new address they reach out to the ATV4K and let it know they're online - ATV4K says "OK". It could also simply be the nature of AirPlay 2 even when not configured as default speakers for the TV. As AirPlay speakers I assume they broadcast their presence as soon as they're online (thereby updating the ATV4K as to their new address).

Also it’s the best and ONLY way to AirPlay to multiple HomePods and choose which ones you want and increase volume individually. I used to be able to do that from my iPhone and iPad around iOS 12 but never the Mac. Except for some odd reason my Mac allowed me to just prior the the last MacOS update on 13.3. Then they went oops that wasn’t supposed to happen and removed it!

That's weird. I always use my iPhone for that - Control Center --> AirPlay --> Control other TVs and Speakers --> Select whatever. You see something like this - note the HomePod+ATV icon:

Tap that icon and it expands to show the selected AirPlay speakers at the bottom... those are sliders that allow you to adjust the volume level of each speaker:

Note: my ATV4K has a soundbar attached and the AirPlay volume slider only controls a percentage of the current volume the soundbar is set to. IOW, it doesn't actually adjust the volume setting on the soundbar (as would the ATV Remote). If you slide it all the way to the right for max volume, you'll only get 100% of the volume the TV/soundbar is currently set to. Probably a good thing. OTOH, if you crank up the HomePods here, you'll get all the volume they can muster :-).

Hi Jason, thanks for the info. Sadly I too have tried all the recommended remedies without success. I remain hopeful that a future update will stabilize the Mini's performance.

I found this example interesting. This was the Home app display... while the Mini's were playing music just fine that I had started using the Music app. I believe it illustrates the issue of the Home app being unaware of Mini status yet some functions still work. Weird...

Thank you bgmeek. I have two iPhones and I turned off the Private Wifi network on both, and restarted the HomePod mini. Bingo. Playing music now. Very happy!