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

@AndrewLih: I made a mistake when writing about 16.4.1 earlier, my apologies. I do not at this time have experience that indicates that 16.4.1 applied to HomePods and HomePod minis does not fix the issue; again, my apologies on the confusion I introduced via my earlier post. At the time of my post yesterday, I had updated everything else (Apple TV, iPad, and so on) to 16.4.1 but at the time Apple was not offering me 16.4.1 for the HomePod minis via the Home app, and I ended up misstating the situation in my post.

So: like you, I have now updated my HomePod minis to 16.4.1 and the HomePod minis are playing away here so we’ll see what the experience ends up being! Here’s hoping the issue has been resolved!

I have the same issue. The stopping seems to be random. Just had my Supertramp playlist playing. It stop on the third Album, Even in "The Quietest Moments" right at the beginning at "From Now On". Very frustrating.

Am also on 16.4.1 and still happening. Found that if I have have a HomePod stereo pair in the home, regardless of it’s playing in the mix, seems to get it screwed up. What a total epic failure for Apple.

I have the exact same issue with a HomePod mini on 17.2.

At night we play a rain song from Apple Music to it on repeat for our toddler as white noise. It’s a normal Apple Music song. It will randomly stop and show “Not Playing”, which is very frustrating.

There doesn’t seem to be any internet connectivity issue at all. I have a Unifi U6LR access point, and no other device disconnects and neither does the HomePod.

This is extremely frustrating, especially since it seems to be a long time issue.

I am having the same problem but not with one Homepod on my desk. My apartment is filled with Homepods. Two in the bedroom for stereo effect, two in the living room also for stereo, one on the enclosed terrace where I do most of my dining and one in the Kitchen to enjoy the music while cooking. Yes I bought the whole frickin thing to IMMERSE myself as Apple calls it and since that update my IMMERSION stops regularly. I say IMMERSION because most of the time all those Homepods are playing at the same time. THIS IS VERY ANNOYING APPLE. PLEASE FIX THIS ASAP....PRETTY PLEASE!!!!! The same thing happens when I use only the Bedroom pair. After a moment they stop playing but on my iPhone they show as playing but no sound comes out. I have to click on play back and forth and move the cursor on the screen to fast forward the song without clicking on next song and it comes back. Very very annoying.

My home WiFi is clearly split between 2.4GHz and 5GHz channels with fairly narrow bands to have better reliability.

No other device except the HomePod has any issues, and I never even “lose” the HomePod either, it just stops playing at random.

This happens only with it, and in both bands, and after resets.

It feels almost like an Apple Music issue.

Yes I tap the center and it doesn’t resume where it left off. It’s starts shuffling all songs. I have to tell Siri to play the playlist I was listening too.

I have tried removing and re-adding. Disabled lossless and Atmos, changed WiFi networks, but it’s the same.

Eventually the night music for the baby that plays in repeat, will stop.

Same here...we have three HomePod originals and since the last update they will not play our smooth groove jazz play list longer than two to three hours, maybe less at times without going black and stopping.

when you tell the HomePod to resume it will not resume the playlist and just start playing music from your library. This is beyond frustrating and I cannily hope someone from Apple Engineering is wisent to this and gets a fix together yesterday! You'd think Apple checks these updates out before launching? Lately you would never notice...

I have an open case with Apple. I am trying to see if the issue occurs too while playing music on my Mac. To possibly see if the issue is with WiFi or Home app.

Did you do the Apple Home architecture upgrade with the iOS 16.4 upgrade to iOS?

Do you have a Mesh wifi at home like Google/Nest wifi or Eero 6/6e?

Just trying to get some commonality to us having the issue.

Thanks

Well gang, my portion of our group problem got worser than worse today, Easter Sunday, my wife’s birthday, and Saturday was out anniversary: the recent iOS update caused our Smooth Groove playlist, the list my wife and I have put together and curated now for years and was 4.5 days long of jazz we loved is gone forever…

we noticed after the update that there were over 100 new songs added to our Smooth Grove play list and when we checked, none of the songs were added by either of us and we would not have put them in there. so, my wife highlight only those song and was attempting a block delete. We she hit delete the entire Smooth Groove playlist disappeared. She did not accidentally high light the entire list, only the 100 songs and was on the side where all you can do is delete songs, you can’t delete a playlist in that section. We are in mourning.

Has anyone else noticed that leaving the house will stop the homepods playing. Even though there are no automations enable to do so? I like to leave the music playing for my dogs. But EVERY time I leave the house the music stops. Even if I only leave for a few minutes.

I tried disabling Location Services in Home App settings. But then I noticed my HKSV cameras stopped notifying when they capture motion.

I'm on the new architecture since 16.2, so I think the new architecture won't fix the issue.

I 100% agree with you. Everything was fine before the 16.4 update. Nothing has changed on my network.

I'm so disappointed to hear 16.4.1 didn't fix the issue. I just updated the HomePod mini to 16.4.1.

Today I figured out why my homepods insisted on Playing Dolby Atmos versions of songs. Even though I have it disabled in Home App settings and in Apple Music app settings on my phone.

I had to disable Atmos on my Apple TV Music settings.

It immediately switched back to High Quality and sounded SO much better.

Check the AppleTv settings too.

But so far again today it has played fine with no issues . It even continued to play after I left the house.

I did upgrade the HomePods and Apple TV late yesterday afternoon. So I Cannot tell you that fixed it.

But I did see some post on Apple status page about music services being down then fixed two days ago.

Coincidence?