Homepod pausing music

I've had this same problem, with two Homepods paired as a stereo.

Working with Apple Support they had me unplug one HomePod.

Then ask the other HomePod to play music and it did without issue.

Then unplug the second HomePod and re-plug in the other. Ask Siri to play music again which it did.

Then plug the other back in, asking Siri to play music again which it did without fail.

Prior to this simple solution i had conducted power unplugs on both reseting them. Even hard resetting both and could not get my HomePods to play music beyond the 2 second pause.

Hi, here is an 'Update' to all having issues with Airplay & HP.

I have been in contact with Apple several times, anyway had a phone call from them last week. The Engineers have finally accepted that there is an issue for some of us using iTunes via Airplay to HP.

I await another call for the resulting fix ( which comes as an update ).

In the mean time I think I have found a fix to our little problem .

First I live in the UK so unsure how anyone else's Router works , here n the UK our Router has 2 frequencies ( 2.4 & 5mhz ), 5 is the stronger one and better to use, less congestion in the airways around you.

Most Routers auto set to the 2.4, but ( I have discovered ) if you log in to your Router via a browser ( example: 192.168.1.255 ), log in with your Admin Password, then in one of the option you can separate the 2 frequencies.

Do this and then 'Save' It is important that you save every action you do here.

You then turn off the 2.4 leaving only 5mhz available ( Save ).

One thing to note when you separate the 2 the 5mhz will have -5 for example at the end of your Hub name ( ab23c - 5 ).

Go to all your Wifi devices, settings, wifi, and 'forget this network' It will then look for other networks, click on the new one ( with the -5 for example ), enter password and away you go.

You might well have to re-start your HP, even re-set and then set up again using the Home App.

Since then everything has worked just fine, no pauses zero.

You could even set the IP address for your HP as 'static' ( always use this IP address ).

One other thing here, just so everyone knows, I play my Music via my Mac Mini ( iTunes Library )

Anyway I hope this helps, please pass on to all other threads in the HP community

Regards

Steve

PS: I now have 2 HPods and they work beautifully zero problems since I moved to the 5 MHz option

Make sure you're not trying to play something from Apple Music service on another device (i.e. something other than your Homepod) while you're Homepod is also playing from Apple Music. Unless you have a family plan (which will allow up to 5 devices), Homepod will pause until you pause/stop playing from that other device.

I have not experienced this issue myself yet.

But just a thought could it be there is another device that has speaker enabled to airplay that at one point in time was being used to stream to homepod, but now music stopped, but use homepod as a speaker is still enabled or ticked as in use.

Then from another device, again with speaker enabled via airplay, or from homepod direct, music is playing on homepod and original device, that is still has use speaker via airplay, is randomly sending out a signal to homepod interrupting, pausing what is playing?

Be interesting to know if who ever is experiencing this checks all devices to see if airplay, use speaker to homepod, is still ticked, unticks it and see if there still having the issue of Homepod pausing music. Quick way to disconnect all devices would be to enable airplay password on Homepod via HomeApp, or change airplay password.

You can tell it to repeat. Whether or not it actually does is a different story.

Best to download the songs from Apple Music too or use ones in your library. I found my internet data was maxing out from playing too many off Apple Music as soon as I got the HomePod. So now I download all on my playlist. Seemed to have cut down on my home wifi data Usage

Try this:

Hi, here is an 'Update' to all having issues with Airplay & HP.

I have been in contact with Apple several times, anyway had a phone call from them last week. The Engineers have finally accepted that there is an issue for some of us using iTunes via Airplay to HP.

I await another call for the resulting fix ( which comes as an update ).

In the mean time I think I have found a fix to our little problem .

First I live in the UK so unsure how anyone else's Router works , here n the UK our Router has 2 frequencies ( 2.4 & 5mhz ), 5 is the stronger one and better to use, less congestion in the airways around you.

Most Routers auto set to the 2.4, but ( I have discovered ) if you log in to your Router via a browser ( example: 192.168.1.255 ), log in with your Admin Password, then in one of the option you can separate the 2 frequencies.

Do this and then 'Save' It is important that you save every action you do here.

You then turn off the 2.4 leaving only 5mhz available ( Save ).

One thing to note when you separate the 2 the 5mhz will have -5 for example at the end of your Hub name ( ab23c - 5 ).

Go to all your Wifi devices, settings, wifi, and 'forget this network' It will then look for other networks, click on the new one ( with the -5 for example ), enter password and away you go.

You might well have to re-start your HP, even re-set and then set up again using the Home App.

Since then everything has worked just fine, no pauses zero.

You could even set the IP address for your HP as 'static' ( always use this IP address ).

One other thing here, just so everyone knows, I play my Music via my Mac Mini ( iTunes Library )

Anyway I hope this helps, please pass on to all other threads in the HP community

Regards

Steve

PS: I now have 2 HPods and they work beautifully zero problems since I moved to the 5 MHz option

This aporoach definitely fixed it for me, except I didn’t do it myself.I happened to have the cable guy out one day who was setting up my new tv cable and I told him how some things worked while others didn’t. He said it was the two frequencies or channels. One goes off briefly and it’s struggling to connect to the higher speed. He logged into my router and set it to default to the lowest speed which be assured me was still pretty fast ( it is) I still have the 5G to use when I want to. I just stick with the 4G as my printer doesn’t support 5G and it all needs to be on the same wifi. Now my printer works, my homepods work.

I was never aware I had two channels or two speeds. All this time my printer could never be found! The wifi was likrly changing to the 5 G.

Anyways it’s most likely the issue causing the intermittent connections and why people dismiss their wifi not working because such and such is working just fine.

Update: after hours of working on this problem, I talked to a person who claimed to be a senior advisor. Although my Wi-Fi and Internet signal seemed to be working fine, he suggested that it might not be of a wide enough bandwidth. I’m using CenturyLink, and only getting 20 MB per second. That has been fine for regular Internet, email, surfing, and AppleTV, but the agent suggested it might not be enough to consistently drive the HomePod without problems if you are using AirPlay. So far I’m not having any problems using just Siri, but I’m not very happy about having to increase my internet bandwidth. Sometimes AirPlay works for up to an hour, but sometimes no more than five or 10 minutes.

Last night come on my Apple advisor, to whom I have talked several times, asked me to try not using the iOS device, but simply using the Hey Siri command. The HomePod ran uninterrupted for about three hours untilI had to turn it off. I think he wanted me to do that as part of his diagnostic process. I was pleased that the thing worked, but if I understand golf king’s note, it wouldn’t work for him, and I am unhappy about not being able to monitor the music on my iOS device.

No comfort, but the other day I had my HomePod running for well over 8 hours on a single playlist called up using Siri. I've also had AirPlay working with computer, Apple TV and HomePod all playing together quite nicely.

I haven't checked back over the thread, but a standard Apple Music subscription only allows one stream. Could it be that your Siri requests are interfering with each other or do you have a family sub?

tt2

Dear all I think I have a fix for this little problem 🙂

So here we go, I'll do my best to explain.

1) you need to log in to your Router via your browser ( in this case Safari ) You should find the details on how to do this on your Router. I live in the UK and have a BT Hub 6, there is a plastic thing that you can remove from the router which has all the details, ie; name of wireless network, the Password / key ( example; Fa12BDt6nvT ), also and important the 'Admin' Password for your Router. It should also give you the IP address that you need to log in to with your browser.

( Example; 192.168.2.345 )

2) Once you have logged in to your Router ( IP address ), you see several options.

one is something like 'MyNetwork' - click on that, you may have to enter the 'Admin' password.

3) You then should see a list ( Options ), Ethernet, Wireless connections. ( here I use my Mac Mini to play music via iTunes ). So what ever you use to play music ( via Airplay to your HP ) click on that.

4) You will see loads of info' and options, one of these options is "Always use this IP address", it should be "OFF', tick it or what ever to turn it to "ON". Then look for the Save icon, tick it and save.

All well and good this will then work and stop the HP sound from suddenly stopping for that odd second or 2.

Since I have changed my settings to this my HP has worked perfectly, no pause zero. Music ( via Airplay ) has played with out a hitch . Happy days.

give it a try and please pass on to all the other Communities that you know ( there are several ).

All the best

Steve

The only solution to gettting my HomePod to work is the restart or reset. I finally just did the restart option last night. At least that was a way to do it in bed. No unplugging. Go into home app, long press it to bring up details, scroll to bottom and remove accesssory. Wait a few minutes then put your phone near it to begin pairing. Not so many stages to go through resetting it, it remembered the name I gave it, not a factory reset.

Try that way way next time to resolve any issues.

Cheers

I’ve had the same, as have my parents 150 miles away. It’s a recent problem I noticed over the past few days which didn’t happen before. It predates iOS 11.3 and persists in iOS 11.3

Our HomePods will pause randomly between songs if listening to a playlist. If I look at my phone to see where it’s stopped, it’s always 1 second into the next track. I can ask it to resume and it continues to play as usual. It happens several times a day. It is also random...it may play a full playlist or it may stop after 2 songs. The internet connection is fine.

Power cycling doesn’t help, nor does resetting the HomePod and removing it from the home app. I have also power cycled the router but the issue remains.

I haven’t noticed the tracks skipping but this is more subtle than music that suddenly and repeatedly stops.

I reported this to Apple and it was helpfully escalated to the engineering team. I think reports are slowly emerging but there’s not much about this online currently. It’s quite a big issue from a usability point of view!

> Our HomePods will pause randomly between songs if listening to a playlist

This sounds a lot like the issue I posted about at

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8285899

except that for me, it's stopped -- still in play mode -- at the beginning of the track before the last track played. The interfaces (happens on all devices) have lost sync with what's playing on the HPod, so everything grinds to a halt.

Still occurring after 11.3, of course, so back I go to the feedback place when I find the link. May our mighty quest lead to victory!

I too have the same issue with HomePod randomly stops playing after 1 or 2 seconds at the beginning of a song from a playlist. I tried resetting the HomePod, resetting the router, and turning shuffle on, but nothing works. And it can be as frequent as every other song, which is very annoying. I haven't had the same problem with radio stations or specifically asking the HomePod to play a certain song; only playlists seem to be problematic. AirPlaying Apple Music from Apple TV and iPhone also seems fine.

I spoke to an Apple Care advisor today, who will forward this issue to their engineers and hopefully she will call me back in a few days for the solution.