Homepod pausing music

Hi Steve,

I think you are describing a different pausing problem to the original post.

The problem I have encountered, along with the person starting this thread is that the HomePod pauses randomly when NOT using AirPlay (I.e either using the iPhone as a remote, or by asking Siri for a playlist from the HomePod).

Sounds like there is a lot going on here and I hope they get it fixed soon. Still waiting for an engineer update.

Hi tt2 ( aka Steve in the UK too 🙂 )

Ok, when i first played some music ( today ) with Siri it was from the Cloud ( No iTunes ), it worked fine.

But when I played some of the same music via iTunes on my Mac I got the 'pause' issue .

My router is the latest from BT and I'm on Infinity 2, which I'm sure you know is Fast.

I doubt its anything to do with the router as if it was then i would get problems even when using Siri, it all comes via Wifi and my router.

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.

May be I'm wrong but ....... !!

Oh before i forget ( having just read your reply again ) I have my Mac Mini plugged in via a cable direct to the router and with wifi on.

So lets see what happens 😉

Glad to chat

Steve ( another Steve in the mix )

I believe it is iOS 11.3 rather than the HomePod. I am experiencing the exact same thing on my iPhone (7 Plus). And this was happening when I was on 11.2

11.3.1 was released the other day, but haven’t upgraded yet.

I wanted to wipe my phone and restore first.

Did that last night, but iOS 11.3 still does a random or intermittent pause on my phone.

Sometimes the podcast audio will cease, but it’s still playing because I can see the elapsed time in seconds is still running.

Other times, it will literally PAUSE. It doesn’t restart unless I press the play arrow.

Hey Bruce...I just wanted to give you all an update as the HomePod problem, for me at least, is getting worse.

I went with my wife to our cottage for a week and noticed that in our car using CarPlay that our Smooth Jazz playlist just paused and stopped playing after about thirty minute or so. Susan wrote you about that episode.

I then switched to the TuneIn app through CarPlay and played 101smoothjazz.com uninterrupted all the way (about 188 miles from our home in Royal Oak, or about 2 hours and 15 minutes worth!)

At our cottage I have three Tivoli radios connected to AirPort express’s and streamed using AirPlay and our TuneIN app and 101smoothejazz.com to one radio using my iMac and the second one using an iPod plugged in to the USB power adapter so not to run the battery out.

NO PAUSING on either radio! This was the case throughout our stay at the cottage. I think I may have tried streaming from the iPod our smooth groove playlist from our Apple Music account and don’t remember it pausing but I would have to redo that test to be sure.

When we arrived home we asked each HomePod to “shuffle” our smooth groove playlist and all three pods played without pausing for about four hours until we went to bed.

The next day we did the same thing and asked all three to shuffle our smoothgroove playlist and all three HomePods played uninterrupted for about 8 hours until I asked one HomePod to pause so we could watch the news.

When I paused one HomePod, the other two HomePods started to randomly pause. And from that moment on it was back to the same frustration of randomly pausing or stopping before a song ended and then starting another or just stopping altogether and going dark!

Today (April 4, 2018) something NEW! I asked one HomePod to shuffle our smooth groove playlist and the HomePod said there was a problem and to check my account in the Home App.

When I checked there was an exclamation point next to the HomePod icon and it said unreachable I think?

I unplugged the HomePod and reset the device and added it to my account.

Then when I asked it to play our smooth groove playlist it took about four or five tries before Siri got it right.

I had the same playlist playing on the HomePod in the master bedroom and when I ask the HomePod to do the same downstairs on the one I just reset it turned off the HomePod in the Master bedroom!

I don't know what to do anymore. Have yet to get any promising word from Apple engineering...

Take care...

Thanks, William. It sounds like you’re somewhere ahead of me technologically; I didn’t understand absolutely everything you said, and I’m not familiar with much of your equipment. After my last somewhat exasperated note, I called my adviser, Julie, and left a message about my frustration. I haven’t heard back from her (!), but today I left her another message that I am having consistently good luck asking Siri to play my playlists, or something from Apple’s library. I don’t run the thing all day, but have run it for two or three hours several times and haven’t run into problems.

But after all this time and effort, trying to use airplay is still a disaster. The pausing happens so often that I have more or less stopped trying. I’m not sure I understand how you could get all three of your HomePods to play the same thing simultaneously without using airplay, and as far as I can tell, the common difficulty in our posts has to do with the HomePod, not the iPhone, equipment, or bandwidth differences.

I’m not sure why Julie has stopped calling me, but I left a message for her today asking if she had heard anything else from the engineers. I was interested that one person in this thread said his advisor was surprised to hear that this is a common problem. Two advisers told me that they don’t put a lot of weight on the community forum because people’s setups are different. There certainly seems to be several people telling their advisors the same thing. It seems one has to go through a lot of exasperation with advisers before anything gets referred to the engineers.

One difference is that I think some people have had difficulty even with Siri.

Bruce

This is still happening in iOS 11.4 :(

I’ve been to two other people’s houses as well and found the same happens with their HomePods when playing playlists. Hoped this would have been ironed out by now!

So let's recap: I paid $350 for a speaker that doesn't work right. But the manufacturer is not expected to fix the problem. Instead, I'm supposed to invest my time in reading pages of posts written by other people who have the same problem and no solutions.

And help from actual Apple representatives when you post and call? Yeah, no. My phone call to customer service about this issue was absurd. The rep confidently blamed my wifi -- when no other device I own has ever had connectivity problems. But, clearly, that was the only reply on the rep's script, so more wasted time, more frustration.

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

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 ).

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

Regards

Steve

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.

I've experimented by telling my HomePod to play "Standards". So it's not even looking at *my* songs, but picking out an Apple Music "just for you". It will start off playing songs and later I check and it has stopped. It's in my bedroom, and maybe it doesn't find any people there, I don't know.

The HomePod might be briefly losing it‘s wifi connection . It is very inconsistent though. Happens to me as well.

you can try restarting your wifi router (unplug for about a minute) and / or Reset network settings on your device(s)

I don’t know of a way except to ask Siri and see if it responds.

All I know is it’s constantly going off on mine. I use Siri a lot and I’ll ask and get no response, then a second later I’ll try and I do, then back to nothing. On & off all day. Tonight while cooking dinner I asked to set timers, it was, then it stopped saying “ok your timer is set for five minutes”. So I’d ask do I have a timer running and it says no you don’t have a timer. I had to keep asking and asking. Then the timer was going off on my watch instead and the HomePod usually overrides all other devices when saying hey Siri. Which indicated homepod never received my request

Like you all my computers and devices have internet. So I suggested to try the reboot as it might just need a kick in the backside so to speak. The wifi reboot often fixes issues on my devices. It’s easier than a HomePod Reset.

Im really finding it hard to learn how to operate the HomePod.

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