Apple HomePod Tips and Tricks: 8 Ways to Improve Your Listening Experience

Jun 14, 2023

Apple has made steady improvements to its HomePod lineup; the most recent update is a PCMag Editors' Choice pick for Apple-first smart speakers, while the HomePod mini gives you a similar experience for less. Got more than one? Pair them together for a true stereo experience or have the music follow you through the house.

But these sleek devices do more than play music. Your HomePod is also a smart home device that can control alarms, smart lights, and more. Here are a few tricks you should know to improve your HomePod experience.

It’s easy to set a timer or alarm through your HomePod, but you're not stuck with one of Apple's jarring presets. Instead, ask Siri to play music or ambient sounds at the appointed time.

In the Home app, select the speaker you want to use for the alarm. Scroll down to Alarms and select New Alarm. Select the time and frequency of the alarm, then choose Play Media under Alarm Sound. Tap Choose Media to select between Apple Music or Ambient Sounds.

As of HomePod software 16.3.1, there are seven available ambient sounds: Fireplace, Forest, Night, Ocean, Rain, Stream, and White Noise. If you select Apple Music, you can search for an artist or song, select music from your library, choose a playlist, or set it to talk radio like NPR.

If you’re listening to music on one HomePod, you can ask Siri to move it to a different Apple speaker. For example, you're listening on your office speaker but want to shift the tunes to the living room. Say: "Hey Siri, move the music to the living room speaker."

Want the music to play in the office and the living room? Say: "Hey Siri, add the living room” or “Hey Siri, play music from the office here" while you're in the living room. Or just ask her to "play everywhere" to send a playlist to all your HomePods.

The trick to using this feature correctly is remembering what you named your speaker. Your mileage may vary on how well Siri understands your requests, but I’ve found it's typically faster than using my phone to shift music from one speaker to the other.

If you have two of the same Apple speakers, you can link them together through a stereo pair. Open the Home app and tap on the first HomePod you want to connect. Scroll down and tap the gear icon in the bottom-right corner. Select Create Stereo Pair from the settings menu.

A list of compatible, nearby HomePod speakers will pop up. Select the second device you want to pair with the first to make the connection. Note that you can only create a stereo pair between two HomePod mini, HomePod (1st gen), or HomePod (2nd gen) speakers. No mixing and matching.

If you're using your HomePods as part of a home theater setup, you can establish a stereo pair with two speakers and an Apple TV device.

Even if you don’t want to use your HomePod devices as your full-time TV speakers, you can send audio from an Apple TV to a HomePod in the living room or throughout the house. One fun example would be to AirPlay the audio from a baseball game playing on the MLB app to a speaker somewhere else in the house, so you can listen to the game even when you leave the room. Just hold down the home button on the Apple TV remote until an overlay pops up on the TV. Choose the AirPlay icon and then select your preferred speakers.

Listening to something on another Apple device and want to send it to a HomePod speaker? On iPhone, make sure Bluetooth is turned on and your phone is on the same Wi-Fi network as your speaker. Go to Settings > General > AirPlay & Handoff and toggle Transfer to HomePod to on. Play something on your iPhone and hold it near the top of the HomePod to transfer.

Introduced with iOS 14, Sound Recognition notifies you if your device detects a certain sound, and this month it rolled out to HomePod and HomePod mini. Once activated, HomePod speakers can listen for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and send a notification to an iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch if an alert goes off. Turn it on in the Home app and you can set up alerts to appear on your iPhone Lock Screen. You can then sign into the Home app and listen to what's going on. "Sound Recognition is designed to protect your privacy so all audio analysis happens on-device and if you check in, it’s always end-to-end encrypted," Apple says.

The HomePod mini and second-gen HomePod come equipped with temperature and humidity sensors. Get a reading by asking something like: “Hey Siri, what’s the temperature in here?” or “Hey Siri, what’s the humidity in the basement?”

You can also check a room’s temperature or humidity by going to the Home app. Tap on the Climate icon at the top of the app screen. This will filter all the devices in your home by climate. Directly underneath, tap on Temperature and it will bring up a list of temperatures from all available HomePod speakers.

Alternatively, click on a HomePod in the Home app and scroll down to the settings. Tap Accessories to see its temperature and humidity metrics. The data your HomePod collects can then be used to set up automations within the Home app to trigger other tasks.

Your HomePod can act like an intercom system, especially if you have several Apple speakers throughout the house. To set it up, open the Home app and go to More > Home Settings, then choose Intercom. Here, you can decide which speakers you want to participate in the feature.

To use the intercom feature, tap the soundwave icon next to your HomePod's name. This will bring up an audio-recording screen, where you can record a message and send it to your other speakers. The message will be sent to all HomePod speakers that have the feature enabled.

You can also tell Siri to use the intercom. Say something like "Hey Siri, intercom 'it's time for dinner'" to send the message to all participating devices or a specific HomePod. People can reply to intercom messages, too.

If your HomePod is acting up, Apple recommends you begin with a restart in the Home app. Open it up on your mobile device or Mac and tap or click HomePod. Select Settings. If you have a stereo pair, tap Restart HomePod. Otherwise, tap Reset HomePod > Restart HomePod.

If that doesn't work, do a formal reset. If you have stereo pair, ungroup them first (Home > Settings > Ungroup Accessories). Open the Home app again and go to HomePod > Settings > Reset HomePod > Remove Accessory.

Unplug your HomePod, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in. Wait another 10 seconds and then place your finger on top of the HomePod or HomePod mini. The white light will turn red; wait for three beeps. You can then set up the HomePod again.

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