Homepod stops playing — not a connectivity issue

Mine does both (as you have described), but mostly stops completely. The little AirPlay icon in iTunes often (but not always) turns orange. I'm sure Apple knows of the problem -- it's likely connected to the reason we do not have AirPlay 2 yet. Bonfire is on for tonight.

I have a similar problem where the homepod pauses a track 20-50 seconds into playing it only when I request from Siri to play a song. It does this every single song it plays. In fact, this happens so much I am unable to use it to play music now at all (without airplaying) which defeats the main feature of this clearly not so smart "smart speaker". Also, creating reminders and reading text messages only works 40% of the time. The pause issue happened a week before ios 11.3 came out and has only gotten worse on 11.3. The reminders haven't worked since day one. I have reset the homepod manually (unplug and red dot method) and by removing from homekit 20 times. I even rebuilt my entire homekit from scratch (took many hours) completely redone my wifi settings, made sure my iPhone was connected to the 5ghz internet before setting the homepod up (it transfers the current wifi settings from your iPhone to it upon set up) and yet nothing has worked. My two friends who are apple techs have no idea. This product is a joke.

I have the exact opposite problem! Siri voice voice requests plays music without interruption. But AirPlay is a disaster.

Fascinating that you have this issue.

I have done similar, resetting AirPod many times, resetting network.

What router do you have?

iboy13765 wrote:

"... and yet nothing has worked. My two friends who are apple techs have no idea. This product is a joke. "

Yes, this product is so unlike Apple, it is hard to believe. And there's no way they can release AirPlay 2 until they fully understand and address these issues regarding AirPlay 1.

Yep I would agree on that, this is what i wrote on the other tread 'HomePod pausing'

"Its very strange as to why all this happens. Me, well i don't think Apple did any sort of 'Out of the Box' testing, it was all in house. By that I mean, if it were me ( A big wig at Apple on the HomePod project ) I would have used people ( like us ) as testers, and not just in the US, all around the world , say 20 in the US, 10 in the UK, 10 in OZ, 20 in South America etc etc with the simple instructions to just set it up and use it how you would ( be that via the cloud, iTunes on your Computer ( Airplay ), iPhone, iPad or what ever. Give it to the people who are actually going to purchase it and use it."

I don't think Apple did that, it was all in 'House' which is false and gives you the wrong data feed back.

Steve

I am also having this issue.

About 50% of the time if I ask Siri to play a particular subscribed podcast she'll reply I do not have any unplayed episodes. So I then start the 'unplayed' podcast on my iPhone X and Airplay to the HP. More times then not it will stop playing on the HP within 5-10 minutes. The iPhone Podcasts app still appears to be playing. After a few moments the 'playing' podcast vanishes from 'Now Playing' and (apparently), ends up being marked as played. To get back to the podcast I have to go into Previously Played and restart it. Of course it starts from the beginning. I'll then just listen to it on my iPhone.

I have this problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a BT Hub 6 vs Apple Whatever issue. It's either this or iCloud Music Library being its usual impenetrable tangly mess. Or both.

The BT Hub 6 has been a nightmare to deal with from the beginning. Before I got a HomePod and Apple TV, it would require a full restart every time I wanted to use AirPlay to play music on my speakers via AirPort Express.

It is still a flaky setup, I restart it once every a couple of days, and it drives me mad. I am definitely buying a separate modem and router very soon.

JandyJoe wrote:

I’m curious what WiFi routers people here with this issue use? Could that be relavent?

I have a Time Capsule.

I don't think routers play any part of this, since I'm using my HPs without any Wi-Fi at all. I moved to a new home and currently have no internet/ no Wi-Fi. I didn't have HPs until I moved here, so I set them up initially using an iPhone hotspot, and set my HPs to be open to "Everyone" (which allows people to AirPlay to the HP without being on your Wi-Fi network, thus no network required).

This works fine, but randomly each of my HPs will stop playing while music appears to continue playing from my iPhone. If I force-quit the Music app on my iPhone and reset the iPhone, I can then resume AirPlaying to an HP. Makes me wonder if this is an iOS issue (instead of, or in addition to HP's OS ... all devices are up to date).

Yes, stops playing between songs. Just started doing this on my homepod. I'll say to play an album from Apple Music and it stops after 3 songs. Sometimes it says "ok" and doesn't even start playing anything. Unfortunately, I have no solution and am still looking. Will have to call Apple Tech Support.

I’m having a similar issue where it pauses the music ever few seconds. It’ll start playing when I tell it to Restart playing or just on its own. Of course it’ll just repause a few seconds later. VERY ANNOYING.

So here’s another really weird thing...it seems to operate fine in my kitchen. But has problems in my bathroom and bedroom. All are about the same distance from the router. In fact, I’m confident it’s not a connectivity issue bc Siri can search just fine in all locations.

So I’m not sure if it’s the new version but I did notice that when I played music on my HomePod via airplay from my iPhone X instead of via the HomePod direct, it seemed to work well. After I did that for a night I didn’t have problems playing music either way.

Mine appears to be resolved now. I stream SiriusXM from my iPhone X to my HomePod all day without it stopping. All my podcasts seem to be in sync now as well, i.e. I can use Siri to play podcast directly on the HomePod, (rather then airplay via my iPhone), and it will sync what has and has not been played with my iPhone. Presumably doing that through iCloud.

I started having this problem after the last iOS update to 11.4. Mine occurs when I ask my HP to play my local NPR station directly. It starts to play then within the first 10 seconds it stops. Of note, this does not occur when I ask my HP to play any music, just the radio station. I have reset my HP without success to the problem. If I stream the same station from my MacBook Pro to my HP it works without issue. Seems to be a HP issue in regards to radio stations? WiFi signal next to my HP is strong. Hope Apple fixes this. Annoying.