Airplaying music from iPhone to Homepod connectivity issues:

Airplaying music from iPhone to Homepod connectivity issues:

When I play music from my phone and I Airplay it to one of the Homepods around my house, it will play normally from Apple Music. I can control the volume, play/stop, and skip all from my phone for a little while. After about 20 mins or so, if I try and select a different song in Apple Music, whether in another playlist or searching for it, the music stops playing on the Homepod. On my phone, the Apple Music screen goes grey with no artist or music info on it, and I can't press play or skip to another song, it just seems like everything freezes in that moment. Homepod, iPhone, and Apple Music all stop communicating with one another. I even try to disconnect Airplay and have the music play back onto my phone, and I won't even have the option to select my phone as a source to play music from.

I have to either power cycle my phone or wait long enough for it to say I was disconnected from the Homepod. Or I get an error saying I don't have family share and it can't play from two devices because it thinks I'm trying to play music from my phone seperately from the Homepod.

The other issue relating to me connecting my phone to airplay music on my homepod is that when I disconnect from playing music on my homepod and I go get in my car, and plug my phone in, the song that starts playing is not the song last playing on the homepod. Instead it kicks my music back to the start of when I initially connected it to the homepod.

So for example, I start a playlist on track 15. Airplay to my homepod. It plays tracks 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc. I stop it on track 21. Disconnect from airplay. Get into my car, plug my phone in (either as a USB media or using Carplay, it happens with both) go to continue to listen to music from the playlist and rather than continue from track 21, it starts back up from track 15.

All devices are up to date. I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max running latest ios 26.3.1. Homepods are the original Homepod and the original Homepod mini's.