Why can't i record a snap or video while homepod is playing a song?

If you're playing the music through AirPlay, you won't be able to record video whilst playing music on your HomePod, because AirPlay doesn't support that. However if you're using Apple Music you can control music on the HomePod without using AirPlay by asking Siri on your HomePod to play music, or through the Apple Music app.

To control you music from your iOS device:

Open Music, swipe up to view the Now Playing screen, tap the output icon, scroll down and tap on your HomePod, you're now controlling the music on your HomePod without using AirPlay.

If you’re using AirPlay you can’t play music and record a video, that’s correct.

Is the music you have in your library music you’ve either purchased from iTunes? If so, you should be able to play that using the method I described, but if your music is only stored locally you won’t be able to do this.

Here are some more detailed instructions in case I wasn’t clear enough.

If you tap the output icon at the bottom of the Now Playing screen, you should get to a screen that looks like this, and then if you tap the bottom panel (not the HomePod in the first panel) you should be able to control your HomePod’s music without using AirPlay.

If your music is only stored locally (i.e. you didn’t purchase it on iTunes and you don’t use iTunes Match) then unfortunately you won’t be able to record snaps/videos whilst playing music.

I don’t know whether AirPlay 2 will fix this, but if this is a deal breaker for you and you’re still within the returns period you might be best to return it now and potentially buy one again if AirPlay 2 does allow recording whilst playing music through AirPlay.

As I don’t know where your music came from or whether you have iTunes Match, I can’t really tell you whether or not it’s going to work. Try asking Siri on your HomePod to play a song in your library. If it can do that you should be able to control it from your phone without using AirPlay. However I can’t guarantee that’s going to work with ALL the music in your library.

Ultimately the HomePod only really reaches its full potential if you have an Apple Music subscription, a decent sized library of iTunes purchases, or a decent sized library and an iTunes Match subscription. Those are currently the only ways the HomePod can play your music without you using AirPlay. Spotify (and other streaming services) integration might be on the way, but there’s no way of guaranteeing that.

It might be that the iPhone cannot support output to AirPlay at the same time that it is recording video. Can you AirPlay from iTunes on a computer instead?

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That video is several months old (the HomePod hadn’t even been released then) and AirPlay 2 wasn’t in beta (it was only recently included in the 11.4 beta testing). I suspect whether you can record video whilst using AirPlay 2 will largely depend on the app developers, and even if it is eventually supported, it’ll likely take Snapchat a while. If this is going to a be a dealbreaker for you I’d recommend returning your HomePod.

If you do decide to return it and you stay subscribed to this discussion, I’m happy to give you an update when AirPlay 2 is released letting you know whether you can record snaps/videos whilst using AirPlay.

AFAIK AirPlay 2 doesn’t allow you to stream different things to different speakers, only to stream the same thing to multiple speakers. If you have multiple HomePods you can have them play different things using your iCloud Music Library because they’ll be streaming the music from Apple’s servers rather than your phone.

The other issue is that even if AirPlay 2 is confirmed to work separately to the rest of your phone’s audio (so music from the app you AirPlay from isn’t interrupted by audio from other apps), there’s no guarantee that Snapchat/Twitter will implement that such that their apps don’t cause interruption.

The problem with Twitter’s autoplaying videos is a problem with the Twitter app, not the HomePod. As for going through your Snapchat feed, the reason this interrupts your music is because choosing AirPlay as your audio output means all your phone’s audio gets sent to the HomePod.

If you want your music to play through the HomePod without interruption you need either an Apple Music subscription, an iTunes Match subscription, or to purchase all your music on iTunes.

How do you play your music through Sonos? Do you have a computer with your music library on it that your Sonos speakers are linked to?

Yeah the HomePod relies on your iTunes purchases and iCloud Music Library to play music if you’re not using AirPlay, which means without Apple Music you need iTunes Match to play your library.

You can obviously still AirPlay your music from your Mac if you don’t want it to be interrupted by other activities on your iPhone, but otherwise your only options for playing your library are Apple Music or iTunes Match.

If neither of those options sound good for you, your best bet is probably to return the HomePod and hope AirPlay 2 might improve the situation. I know Snapchat allows you to keep playing music over Bluetooth when you record a video, so it may well be up to them to support the same thing with AirPlay.

I will also just point out that Sonos supports Apple Music so if you did decide to subscribe you could use it with both Sonos and the HomePod. Up to you, but if you were considering switching to streaming then an Apple Music subscription would work with Sonos as well as HomePod.