HomePod AirPlay/Handoff on HomePods

[bbednarz]

I think the way Apple handles handoffs to the HomePod is just horrific. In my opinion what should happen is when you AirPlay something from your phone to a HomePod, the phone should remain the main playback device. This way you can simply use your phone or watch to control what is playing. When playing podcasts this also eliminates the need for iCloud to sync your playback status across devices (which never works well). This is how it works for Sonos and other AirPlay only devices.

The HomePod decides it needs to be the device that is the main playback source which makes it much more difficult to control using your phone and even more of a hassle to group speakers together.

Am I missing a setting somewhere to change this behavior? It’s been driving me up a wall for awhile, but hasnt been worth my time to really look into it. I mostly assume like other Apple decisions this is just how it is and there is no way to change the behavior. I wish they would let us get rid of the Siri and HomeKit functionality from these things and just use them as AirPlay targets.

 

[erihp]

Duplicate post

 

[erihp]

I usually just hit ‘control other speakers and tv’s’ select the device you want to control, and then you have native control of the device. I find myself manually airplaying versus handoff but once I figured the control other device menu out it made it easier to grasp what you were controlling.