I'm one of those people who loves the Apple Universe and lives in it, full-time. I'm also one of those people who help all their friends and family to learn Mac OS/iOS, enjoy their features, and troubleshoot the issues they experience.
Listening to Apple Music on my iPhone and streaming to all of the connected speakers and HomePods throughout my home is one of the things I love to do most throughout the day. I know it's the same for many of my friends and family members. But this feature, which automatically transfers control to HomePods, confounds me to no end. It makes no sense at all to me why a HomePod software is designed to steal control of your playback on your iPhone without letting you know or automatically adjusting your playback controls on your phone to help you be aware of what is happening. (Why is there not a clear and concise option that controls an automatic change of source or takeover of control?)
I simply cannot explain this strange, unintuitive, and useless behavior to other people. It doesn't seem like a feature Apple would implement (i.e. loss of control of your device's playback). And what is equally frustrating is that it is really difficult to come up with the correct search terms to look for explanations or solutions on the internet for this issue. (Once I tried to explain it to an Apple Support representative, over the phone, and I struggled to find the words to describe what was happening.)
I have gifted HomePods to friends and family, and I am not kidding when I say that I have been to more than one of those people's houses and seen those HomePods unplugged and no longer in use, or witnessed someone yanking the HomePods out of their outlets in a tantrum of confusion. (I mean, talk about a moment of embarrassment.)
Dear Apple:
It makes no sense that there is not a clearly documented option to choose or prevent this behavior. I have spent hours... days searching for the right setting(s). I have tried countless settings (and combinations of settings), including the most obvious ones I would expect to be effective:
Automatically Airplay: Never
Transfer to HomePod: Off
Handoff: Off
(And by the way, for various reasons I would like to not have to turn these settings off, like for having the ability to copy and paste between Mac and iPhone, using Handoff.)
But, after two years of searching for a solution, I give up. I am junking all four of my HomePods and my three HomePod Minis. And I'm upset about it because I spent so much money to buy them—not to mention the ones I gifted that go unused to this day. They're great speakers! And I love having access to Siri in every part of my home and using them to control all of my Apple HomeKit devices. I've gotten so used to those conveniences and enjoyed them for years.
If you can help me by offering hope for a fix or by pointing me to a solution… or even a temporary workaround, I would be so grateful. I hope to hear from you before I have my next yard sale.
Sincerely,
Mark
