HomePod stops playing after 2-3 hours since upgrade to 16.4

@jladams97-apple,

no worries! I am already used to how things break on each update Apple releases. 🥲

I think 16.4.1 might have fixed the issue. The music played for 8+ hours without stopping. Will report back if issue reappears. 🤞

I will wait for 16.5.1 when Apple releases 16.5. Not trusting them anymore.

I have the same problem since 16.4.

interesting is that the problem is only with Apple Music.

normal radio is playing over the HomePods non stop , many hours.

so it’s NOT a problem with Wi-Fi connection.

any updates with the open case with Apple ?

I have not had the issue with the 16.4.1 update so I recommend making sure you’re updated to that.

Mine have been unstable all day long. I rebooted my wifi router, then reset network settings on my iPhone (the iOS device that set them up and the wifi HomePod is using) Did that about 3 times. I also restarted the HomePods.

They will stop playing when they lose their connection to the internet

This is happening to me too. I agree it is not "Pausing". It stops and acts as if was never playing anything. I have done everything possible to correct this issue.

1. Reset all homepods.
2. reset all wifi devices.
3. Turned off all Music/Media settings in Homepods and Home App. And turned them back on.
4. Disabled Lossless Audio, Dolby Atmos and even animate album art and left disabled.
5. Signed out and back in to Apple ID.
6. Removed all Homepods from Home app and re-added them.

And I even Went as far as removing my entire Home from Home app.

This was PAINFUL! Having to re-add all lights, switches, plugs and homepods.

Recreated all automations and shortcuts.

Yet today it stopped playing after exactly 3 hours! Not crashing or stopping in the middle of a song.

It just finished the last song it wanted to play and then went silent.

mine has been like that for months now, its terrible, this is purely a software issue. It even happens when playing YouTube videos... I don't think they will be able to fix this bug soon as not enough people are complaining. I can't tell you guys how many times I have unplugged my **** HomePod mini from the power source just to fix this issue for only some minutes/hours.

Sadly, but honestly unsurprisingly, this issue came back with release 17. I'm on 17.2 and I have 2 of my HomePod minis on which I regularly play Apple Music playlists (same playlist playing to both HomePod minis at the same time) and nearly as regularly those playlists mysteriously stop playing. When the music stops playing, the HomePods will still show as "connected" in the Music app and control center, but it won't show any music, it will just show Not Playing; this contrasts with other HomePods mini on which the audio was stopped intentionally which will show in the Music app and control center the audio that was playing at the time those HomePod minis were stopped. The point of this being that when this issue happens and these HomePod minis stop playing, the playlists they were playing are completely forgotten, not simply paused. It's a very, very annoying issue.

Same! I also tried resetting the HomePod mini but music still stops a few hours after playing. Very annoying.

This issue wasn't present on 16.3.

It seems like the HomePod is crashing? Like John said it is not pausing. When the music stops I check the media (music) control in the control center on my iPhone. The name of the song will show on the HomePod if it paused but it just shows Not Playing which means it forgot the music it had just played or just crashed.

I don't know why Apple sells a music player, but it doesn't play music correctly.

I wouldn't buy a car that doesn't drive. Sad.

Mine stopped identifying playlists a long time ago but this week they can. I need to ask it because it’s so muddled up. I need to redo some of my playlists from scratch. I can’t figure out how come the playlist I have an automation for around 8 pm has no issues and will keep on going until I tell it to stop. It never fails. My morning one no longer triggers. Yesterday I had it set to this same evening playlist instead and it triggered. Are my playlists corrupted? The only difference on this evening one which works is that I created it a couple of years ago. I only ever edit it by deleting or adding songs. I might try turning off sync library, then on again to see if this fixes it first. My playlists are all Apple Music It’s quite tedious doing all this. There’s a magic formula but who knows what the formula is.

Well, on the one hand I’m glad it’s not just me. On the other hand, I’m irritated about this issue and the fact that Apple introduced this issue into the 16.4 update and that there’s no way to fix it (even one of the normal painful Apple solutions) and that now for some weeks Apple hasn’t released a fix for it (it is NOT fixed in 16.4.1). I’m with all of you who like to have background music going at pretty much all times on my HomePod minis.

I was wondering if moving to the new Home architecture would solve this problem (I’m on the original architecture) but so far I haven’t seen any comment on that point here (or elsewhere for that matter).

I also experience the issue where one of my HomePod minis stops playing but thinks it’s still playing (it will be silent while the others are playing and you can ask it “what song is this” and it will tell you the name of the song playing on the others; if you go into the Home app and remove it from the playing group and add it back, it will start playing again). That’s different, but also annoying.

My HomePod minis, by the way, all have battery bases, they’re not losing power, they can’t lose power. And my AT&T fiber service here is very reliable as is my router which is on an UPS. This isn’t a power or Internet connectivity issue.

Someone noted that when a HomePod loses connectivity this happens. That may be true now but it used to not be: prior to 16.4, I have had an Internet outage (my previously noted reliable AT&T fiber service notwithstanding) and had the HomePods continue playing what was apparently cached music.

Someone is saying that when one HomePod goes down now it makes them all stop playing. This could be. Again, my HomePods aren’t losing power, but they could be crashing. Or they could just be losing connectivity to Apple; again, my Internet connection here is really reliable, but the Apple News app often gives me fits loading content so my experience is that the Apple infrastructure itself isn’t so reliable.

Well It seemed OK yesterday. It played all day. As long as I did not look at it too much. You know Quatum theory and the cat in the box business is as follows.......

But weird things are happening.It appears that the "Playing Next... Autoplaying similar music" comes and goes.

By

that I mean. Today it started playing "My Favories Mix" and then

continued to play similar music once the playlist was finished.

But

then I noticed it was playing the same song 5 times and listed it as

the next 4 songs. I skipped the next 4 songs and then the

Playing Next (infinity loop icon) disappeared and it stopped playing.

I thought, maybe it was since it was Tuesday and Apple Music makes a new "favorites mix" on Tuesday it was related to that.

So

I restarted the homekit scene that shuffles the favorites mix and it

played the list but still missing infinity icon. So it stopped when the

list was over. No similar songs.

I started an

80s Hits playlist. It did not show the infinity icon and was not playing

the next song it showed as next up to be played.

Example:

Playing Song A, (Bryan Adams Cuts like a knife)

Next was listed as Song B (Human League Dont you want me)

But it played Song X (Tomi Basil Hey Micki)

It continued this random song played next rather than what was shown to be next.

Also........ It was playing songs in Dolby Atmos. I have Atmos disabled in Home Settings and in Music Settings.

So why is it playing Dolby Atmos?

I then told Siri to play a song (Second Hand News by Fleetwood Mac) and the inifinty icon is back as expected.

And

while typing this update email. I restarted the Home Scene that plays

my shuffled Favorites mix. Now the autoplay infinty icon is back.

Until I scroll to the bottom and it then disappears.

Mine resumes where it left off. It can be the manner in how it’s touched. See: Use Touch Accommodations on HomePod and HomePod mini

Have you tried to remove Apple Music from HomePod?

Sorry sad to hear all the help you went through! 

I contacted support on Thursday and my rep escalated to Apple Engineering and gave me a case number.

strange thing happened…I have our four day-plus jazz playlist playing at the end of the night on Thursday and told it to pause. The next morning said resume and the playlist contained properly. It played all day Friday and late into night. I paused at bedtime and resumed on Saturday…then less than an hour in it stopped and wouldn’t resume original playlist where it ended. I re started playlist and it quit in 30 minutes! The restarted and got two hours and stopped. I am , as I’m sure all of you are, losing my mind as this lack and unnecessary F-up from Apple is unacceptable. Good to luck to all…and keeping fingers crossed Apple can fix this before I throw about a thousand dollars worth of HomePods out the window…once I’ve opened the window of course…cant afford new windows at the moment.

Who knows what the problem is. Music stops or skips after a few seconds of each song. Or doesn’t play at all. The only way I can get music to play without any hiccups is to play from Apple TV. That hikes up my electricity bill to turn on a tv and apple tv. My usage starts spiking. it’s my only option if I have company because it’s embarrassing having them mess up. Today an automation of music finally played but I wondered how it was so loud. Each HomePod was a different volume level. One was 46%, mini pair at 26% and another at 65%. I have one OG that’s the most reliable. It’s the OG I bought last when they announced they were discontinued, so I quickly bought one before they were gone. I’d say it’s had the least hard resets done and the least software updates installed (I skipped a few). Not sure if that has anything to do with it. It’s a mystery.

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