HomePod Mini keeps disconnecting

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!

I have no problem with my mini stereo pair disconnecting. I have a small problem with them sounding tin canny when Dolby Atmos albums switch tracks. I fixed that by playing the Atmos albums on shuffle. Atmos albums or playlists on shuffle. But disconnecting? No. I keep home app options on Only People Sharing The Home and make sure sharing is always set up. I changed the names of homes and everything to jibberish. I have Spectrum and it has an app that can edit all the devices connected to my WiFi and I had to clean it up. My minis are dreams. They’re a little work because they stream WiFi themselves. But I’m very happy with the sound.

🧿🎶🧿

That is not true. Try Amazon Echo Studio, Sonos or Yamaha, among others. Sonos or Yamaha with AirPlay 2. With a big difference, without cuts.

I talk about Sonos and Yamaha because I have them. But you also have Sony, Bose, JBL,.......

HomePod "big" - 325€

Amazon Echo Studio - 239€

Both support Dolby Atmos and can be used with Apple Music.

The HomePod Mini does not support Dolby Atmos

My hearing is not fine enough to appreciate big differences.

I just want to be able to listen to speakers with acceptable quality and without cuts. I don't think that's asking too much.

An Amazon Echo Dot costs only 65€, you can listen to Apple Music and I can control my home accessories for half the price and equivalent sound than HomePod mini.

I'm usually happy with Apple products, but if one thing is wrong, it's wrong, and in the case of the HomePods (Mini or not mini), they are bad products.

I’ve had the one HomePod 2 for a month maybe less, constantly so far all I’ve had is music being cut off because of it disconnecting. I’ve restarted router. Reset the HomePod and so on. Even changed its place to see if it’s wireless interference but nothing changes anything. I have had a horrible experience so far to say the least

I'll have to give this a try, but I find it incredibly odd that a company like Apple wouldn't know their own feature would break their devices. This seems like a really obvious omission.

one other thing, why is this affecting (for me) the HomePod mini and not the original HomePods I have in my home?

Right after the recent OS updates that included the revised architecture I completely restored all of my HomePods and AppleTVs hoping to fix this problem, at the time "private address" was turned on. Sounds like I need to do that again, but I don't understand why it only affects one (mini) of my 4 speakers.

I hear you. Like I said, I don't understand Apple's decision to implement this feature, make it default, and fail to offer a global on/off switch (instead of only SSID by SSID).

The original HomePod may have elements of A8-compatible code that predate the Private Wi-Fi Address feature (just speculating).

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?

Today my stereo pair got ungrouped after I did a smoke detector test. The left one out of the pair heard the alarm.

I’d really like to them working again. Thanks for your input.

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 might try this later today because they’re acting up again.

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

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 :-).

Yes they’re set as default audio. I have 2 Apple TV 4Ks. The thing is, I have morning music automations that are plying to several Pods and once “linked”, they’re stuck acting as a group and it’s extremely difficult to get them separated. Control other speakers and TV’s doesn’t work. Now my Mac is suddenly allowing me more than one HomePod from the music app. It was allowing all on my browser watching tv or Netflix, as well as the tv app. Not tested the tv app again to see if that suddenly decided to work.

Thinks for all your help. I’ll try it tonight once my company leaves. I might not do it all exactly as per your instructions but I’ll post back on what I did and what worked. I have 9 HomePods and there’s one OG that won’t reset properly, I’ll just restart that one.

Mostly I want my music automations to work again. They work some days and other days don’t trigger at all, while other days only some pods come on. The evening automation never fails. I did a test, thinking “it’s the playlist”. One playlist just seemed corrupted. I deleted it. So there’s that theory ….

My timers are atrocious.

Hey siri set a timer for 3 minutes

Timers can’t be set for a time of day, so I set your alarm for 3 AM. Not really important though.

Hi Jason, my Homepod Mini's are separated by about 9.5 feet and have direct line of sight to each other. The Mini's are about 18 feet from the WiFi router. I do not believe there is any meaningful interference potential, we live in an apartment building of approx 100 units with only residential tenents. There is no other building within several hundred yards. Hope this info is useful.

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...

Oh my god I had connection issues with one of my HomePods for months… I‘ve tried everything: rebooting, reseting factory defaults, even tried to delete and configure all my devices from scratch and nothing helped. I spent hours trying to fix it and only your solution helped. Thank you some much!!!

HomePod mini is the absolute worst product ever. Asking it to play music results in awful music selection. Even if you ask it to play a particular artist, it results in playing that artist's worst songs. Trying playing music from your phone or computer results in it DISCONNECTING after playing a few songs. Amazon devices and music app is SO MUCH better than Apple. Apple so-called services are just the bottom of the barrel

3:46am EST - I have set of 3: large pod centralized and minis on each side of bed. Not only do they drop out.. but they sometimes decide to play iTunes My Favorites I had been playing on way home or bopping to in the OR!

I use Portal to play soothing background noise because surgical ears need a break and sounds of the Pacific Ocean is my lullaby.. but I instantly wake up when HomePods cut out to silence or start blaring “Get Low” by Lil Jon & Ying Yang Twinz (don’t judge, some OR folk listen to ratchet rap while you’re blissfully snoozing for hours.. Death Metal too). These d*mn possessed HomePods I coughed up good $ for a little relaxing immersion nature surround sound are disturbing my precious sleep!!

Interference.. PLEASE!! Can Apple magically drop the “extend your car warranty..” calls I get all day making nurses/reps repeatedly shout out my random incoming numbers while I decide if I’d like to answer on speaker in front of entire OR staff?! DO RIGHT BY US HOMEPOD AND FIX THIS CRAP!