How to fix persistent ghost touch issue on HomePod?

It seems to be an issue inherent with the Gen 2 HomePods. Their touch panels go bad and then the Ghost Touches issue appears.

There is a guy in WA State in the US who is a master at fixing HomePods. His name is Nic. Do a search. The last time I linked to him the moderators removed my comment.

He can replace the touch panel. He charges $100 plus shipping both directions. But that's cheaper than a brand new HomePod. While he's at it he also does a major dust clean out for you.

He's repaired both of my OG HomePods that had different issues.

There is a company called Pirateship Shipping where you can buy discounted shipping labels.

doubt a software update will ever fix it

sounds like it's a hardware defect

Homepod randomly starts playing. - Apple Community

and people have been having success by disabling the touch panel part of the homepod

Can’t give the link to a website, but like the other person who said here you can look up his name on Google and if you find his website, he does have a page on there that supplies other people and other countries that will do these Repair jobs but like I said, you can look it up on YouTube and take it apart yourself. I believe this involves disconnecting a ribbon and some people have disconnected the wrong ribbon.This seems to be the only way to fix this problem. I’m not personally going to attempt that with mine. It’s basically a dead HomePod now because I tried plugging it in again and it started doing it again, playing really loud music at all times of the day and it wasn’t even the music that I liked!

I suppose at some point the only way I could get some of my money back is to try selling it on marketplace or something because people will buy it for parts, so there’s that but I will have to say being sold “as is”.

See this for more info on how to fix: Homepod randomly starts playing. - Apple Community

I know about Nic, he’s good and you’re right we will get the comment removed or link to him, but some have managed to do it themselves by watching YouTube videos but then you disable the touch

One of my GEN two HomePods suffered this but one is so far so good.

WOW, from the YouTube teardown video posted in the linked topic, the Gen 2 is so much more complicated to take apart than the OG. I've watched some of Nic's YouTube teardowns of the OG and they are pretty simple and straight forward.