HomePod Mini keeps disconnecting

Hello:

Everything with the last version of firmware.

I have:

2 – HomePod First Generation

9 – HomePods Mini

4 Apple TV 4K

- 1 with 2 HomePod Fitst Generation in stereo (I really end up always using the home cinema)

- 6 with the other 3 Apple TVs with stereo pairs.

I also have 4 Sonos Roam paired in stereo that support

AirPlay 2 and 5 Yamaha MusicCast Multiroom with AirPlay 1.

7 Alexas

I have had the private address disabled for years in my iPhone and iPad.

My access points are Linksys Velop AX4200 (Wifi 6), recommended by Apple. Previously, Linksys Velop WHW03 (Wifi 5), also recommended by Aplle.

1GB symmetrical fiber.

I don't have any problems with any device on the network. Everything works perfectly, I have a sustained speed of 900Mb upload and download on average. I only have problems with the HomePods.

I have had two open incidents with Apple for months. They don't answer me anymore.

Problems:

- The stereo pairs are disconnected and only one of the HomePods can be heard. Sometimes the left and sometimes the right.... In all cases, both HmePods are connected to the same access point.

- Apple TVs disconnect from HomePods. You have to restart everything to get them working again for some time. No more than 24 hours.

I have tried everything possible:

- Disable private address, do not disable it

- Factry Reset of everything (HomePods and AppleTV) and tests in all cases. I'm tired of trying things.

- I have disabled the 5GHz network so that everything is only on 2.4GHz and I have the same problem. When I have both bands activated I use the same SSID. The problem is the same.

- I have changed router/access points (WiFi 5 to Wifi 6)

- Random MAC addresses are generated and I do not understand why and I consider it to be a security problem for my network since I cannot identify the devices that are mine.

- The network is as normal as any normal house can be.

I don't know what I can do anymore.

Apple is no longer what it was. Many products, many services, but less and less quality and higher prices. I have been with Apple for more than 15 years.

I have the entire house automated. Lock, sensors, heating, lights (Philips HUE), plugs,..., fortunately I have looked for compatibility with Alexa and HomeKit.

I use Alexa instead of Siri. Alexa works perfectly, Siri fails a lot and drains the phone's battery with the Home App without using it.

When I ask Siri to do something, sometimes it does it and other times it tells me it can't help me... I also have two open incidents without resolution for months.

The support, over the years, has gotten worse and worse.

I even use Apple TVs to watch television using an HDHomeRun four-channel tuner. I really use the television as a monitor. In the end I hear them through the television speakers or through the home cinema in the living room.

With Yamaha or Sonos, no problems when using them as temporary audio output for Apple TVs.

Please, If anyone sees this, I will try to put it everywhere I can, I would really appreciate some solution before removing all the HomePods and changing them for Sonos or Yamaha, which also have better sound and can be associated with Alexa to have sound throughout the house .

Thanks

I wholeheartedly agree. I have six paperweights arranged around the house. They sporadically work, then *blip* gone.

As consumers we shouldn't be required to jump through hoops in order to (try to...) get Apple products to work.

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.

Ok. I’m mistaken sorry. I’d like to share because my experience is different than these posts and I’m very happy with my setup at the price. In the home app turn off home summaries, turn off intercom, assign long sentences to the names of the home, rooms, groups and speakers, keep setting on “only people sharing this home” and keep family sharing always active. I have been disconnected like twice in two years. Had some skipping problems that went away. Have some quality issues with Dolby Atmos albums that I keep at bay with shuffle. Don’t know if I’m lucky or what I did helped. I have always had private address on.

Dave778778 wrote:

I wrote in another post that my HomePods disconnect but that was an isolated case that I nixed with my methods and not bgmeek’s method of exposing your devices to hacking

I realize that Apple's "Privacy Warning" is alarming, but in no way does turning off Apple's (unique with in the industry) Private Wi-Fi Address 'feature', on only your home network, expose one's "devices to hacking". Seriously, I'll send you a dollar if you can cite ONE instance of any victim of a "hack" or even real evidence that tracking a device's hardware address across publically-accessible networks is even a thing! Does Starbucks track my hardware address across their stores? I doubt it but don't care if they do. There are much better ways for a nefarious entity to know exactly where you are.

Anyway, since you're groovin' with Private Wi-Fi Address=ON with the iPhone that setup your HomePods on your WiFi, please share your WiFi network setup. Generally the mesh setups have the most issues. The issues are random annoying network flakiness after homepod reboots/updates.

First I don’t think it’s wise to downplay hacking efforts these days and, contrary to your ideas, most people know that. Second we’re just trying to listen to music and shows on HomePods. If my solutions work then it’s obviously hacking efforts. Like I said maybe I’m lucky. I have a regular home cable WiFi router and modem from spectrum with a regular 500 speed. That’s all I know. I’d like to apologize to bgmeek for my comments on this post. I just hate hacking and people who downplay it.

Look, it's a bug exposing half of a mobile feature on what's normally a stationary device. I'm glad it's not affecting you. With a simple WiFi setup it won't matter if your HomePods use a different WiFi hardware address with each reboot. As long as they have the SSID & passkey, and they do, you're cool. Any peers used to talking to "KitchenHomePod" at one address may or may not glitch when KitcheHomePod suddenly gets new network addresses, but they'll recover and learn the new addresses (in the case of AirPlay, instantly).

If Apple ripped the dern "Private Wi-Fi Address" feature out of iOS tomorrow, along with the unsubstantiated 'Privacy Warning' when it's not in use, nobody would miss it. Although, several business network managers would shake their heads recalling their scramble when every properly-secured-and-identified iPhone in the company got updated to iOS 14 and suddenly started using new WiFi hardware addresses.

MY SUCCESSFUL SOLUTION: I tried some of the ideas on this community, and I tried a support call with Apple. No joy.

Then I had an idea. Since my newish router provides 5GB and 2.4GB wifi, maybe the HomePod mini I have is only capable of the 2.4GB channel. So I went through the tedious reset/reset procedure, re-adding the accessory, sigh, but this time with the 2.4GB. And it works. So far, since this change, it has not dropped the connection once. I have two iPhones and just one HomePod mini.

In short, I have spent a fortune on HomePods and Apple TV, which they say have functionality, but I cannot use them because they do not want to solve the problem and, every time I use the Apple TV, every day, I have to pick up and select via AirPlay where I want to play the sound instead of setting it as the default output.

I don't know about you, but that seems like a bummer to me and anyone would protest at something like this.

My adventure continues tonight. I actually got 4 of my 6 speakers to play tonight (lately my iPhone will say that the speakers are playing but they are not...). All 4 played downstairs (2 in the kitchen and 1 each in the dining area and the living room); one or the other of them would fade out and then recover (par for the course...) but then, all 4 became badly out of phase and stayed that way, the worst I have yet experienced. Imagine a Bach fugue, out of phase.

Maddening. Apple has really come up with a winner this time.

Some router systems work more seamlessly with Apple devices, particularly the private Wi-Fi address default. Based on some advice, I bought an Eero 6E 3-pack. I have all kinds of devices hooked up to the network. 2 Apple TVs, two HomePod Minis, a Phillips Hue hub, a Yale door lock, three televisions (LG and Samsung) 10 Kasa Smart dimmer Switches, a pellet grill, a Cafe grinder/coffee maker, garage door opener, GE washer and dryer, multiple computers phones, two iPads, air monitor and an Ecobee Smart premium with 8 rooms sensors…multiple Sonos speakers and an Marantz Network-enabled receiver…no trouble with any of it over the past year when I installed it all aside from having to reset the Yale lock once. Not a single problem with the HomePod Minis. They’re in separate rooms, not paired, and I don’t use them for the televisions. That’s all Sonos. I’ve read other comments from Eero users that say the same thing. I love the Minis. I use them for music, to tell me about the weather, Wikipedia seamless and to give verbal commands to most of my devices. Aside from Siri periodically asking who I am when there’s background noise, it all works seamlessly.

SmittyMcSmithFace wrote:

Some router systems work more seamlessly with Apple devices, particularly the private Wi-Fi address default. Based on some advice, I bought an Eero 6E 3-pack. I have all kinds of devices hooked up to the network. 2 Apple TVs, two HomePod Minis, a Phillips Hue hub, a Yale door lock, three televisions (LG and Samsung) 10 Kasa Smart dimmer Switches, a pellet grill, a Cafe grinder/coffee maker, garage door opener, GE washer and dryer, multiple computers phones, two iPads, air monitor and an Ecobee Smart premium with 8 rooms sensors…multiple Sonos speakers and an Marantz Network-enabled receiver…no trouble with any of it over the past year when I installed it all aside from having to reset the Yale lock once. Not a single problem with the HomePod Minis. They’re in separate rooms, not paired, and I don’t use them for the televisions. That’s all Sonos. I’ve read other comments from Eero users that say the same thing. I love the Minis. I use them for music, to tell me about the weather, Wikipedia seamless and to give verbal commands to most of my devices. Aside from Siri periodically asking who I am when there’s background noise, it all works seamlessly.

Interesting. Lots of earlier complaints involved the Eero WiFi setups, so I'm not surprised they took steps with updates to workaround the challenges of Apple's Private Wi-Fi defaults and dealing with periodic HomePod Wi-Fi address changes quickly.

It's a reminder for folks to verify their WiFi systems are on the latest firmware if dealing with HomePod connection issues (perhaps they've been forced to workaround apple's bugs and poor design decisions ;-).

I have been experiencing all of the frustrating glitches and connection problems with my

HomePod mini speakers that are mentioned in this group. Many are the times I

considered trashing them. And then it occurred to me…I have been working with a

modem/router provided by my internet service provider over 5 (possibly 10…)

years ago.

I have invested in an Asus RT-AX86U Pro wifi router. It has received several highly

positive reviews regarding the strength of the signal it distributes through

walls and ceilings. (I live in a two-story house.) The Asus is highly

configurable, allowing me to separate the 2.4 ghz band from the 5.0 ghz band,

giving each a different network name with different passwords. I am working

with only the 2.4 ghz as I am led to believe that the 5.0 ghz band is not as

effective in dealing with barriers like walls and ceilings. With the Asus I am

also able to prioritize media streaming when needed for wifi.

The result: rock solid performance throughout the house, no disconnects and better sound

quality on top of it all.

A relatively weak wifi signal has been my problem all along.

I have a stereo pair on HomePod Minis and I was experiencing drop outs continually on one of them. I use Roon as my music server.

I have an Eero mesh network, my Minis were right next to a one of the mesh units.

I have turned off the additional nearby Eero mesh unit, my music is now streaming from my main Eero unit which is connected a wired ethernet connection to my Roon Core. Not a single drop out since the change.

Probably not something that covers everyone, I am guessing most peoples issues relate to Airplay via iPhone etc.

Dave778778 wrote:

Wondering about having your passcode, WiFi password, Apple ID password and your phone cloned and getting private address turned off is the last hacker hurdle to jump

Read all about it. Provide ONE example of a hack related to using or not using a random hardware address on YOUR home network. Heck, one hack example on any public network? Just one?

Why so many posts about something you clearly don't understand? Are you a bot? If so, why?

I'd explain the tech to you, but why? Know this: There's absolutely NOTHING 'Private' about this so-called feature. It's simply a different MAC address on every WiFi SSID. It makes ZERO difference to security on your home network, and unfortunately, it doesn't affect your iPhone on ANY OTHER network. It shouldn't be anywhere near a HomePod, but it's there and it's broken.