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HomePod Can I use a HomePod as a TV speaker?
- Thread starter zinacef
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You can and I do. However, it’s not ideal. HomePod isn’t designed for it. It’s an AirPlay speaker so it works the way AirPlay was designed to work. Meaning you have to connect to the tv every time you want to use it if at any point you do something that breaks the connection. That means connecting to your HomePod and then disconnecting from tv if you want to be able to change the volume with your remote. HomePods do not have a center channel for dialogue. So when music and dialogue are playing at once the music takes priority and the dialogue can be muffled. I wouldn’t recommend using it in a family situation where everyone may not be on the same technological level.
Now with that said I love using my HomePods with my tv. In fact I have disabled the internal speakers in my TV. I can pretty much control almost everything with just my voice. I’ve made shortcuts that allow me to to launch every app without touching my remote. The only thing I can’t do is say, “Hey Siri, what did they say?” Other than that everything works.
![fceb9dc5d6514452e84d4ad910e46a7c.png]()
Overall, I just wouldn’t recommend this as a first choice. I do it because I already had the HomePods and when I got them I had a TV with good internal speakers so I never wanted/needed a sound bar. Fast forward a year later and I now have a super thin 4K TV with crappy internal speakers. I don’t want a sound bar now because I have these HomePods and I’m cheap. I’m not trying to spend more money because if I did I’d buy a Sonos Beam. Those aren’t cheap. I got my Mom one for her tv because there’s no way she’s be able to deal with the finicky-ness of AirPlaying tv to HomePod.
If you you decide to do it I suggest getting two. You’ll want a pair for stereo.
Now with that said I love using my HomePods with my tv. In fact I have disabled the internal speakers in my TV. I can pretty much control almost everything with just my voice. I’ve made shortcuts that allow me to to launch every app without touching my remote. The only thing I can’t do is say, “Hey Siri, what did they say?” Other than that everything works.
Overall, I just wouldn’t recommend this as a first choice. I do it because I already had the HomePods and when I got them I had a TV with good internal speakers so I never wanted/needed a sound bar. Fast forward a year later and I now have a super thin 4K TV with crappy internal speakers. I don’t want a sound bar now because I have these HomePods and I’m cheap. I’m not trying to spend more money because if I did I’d buy a Sonos Beam. Those aren’t cheap. I got my Mom one for her tv because there’s no way she’s be able to deal with the finicky-ness of AirPlaying tv to HomePod.
If you you decide to do it I suggest getting two. You’ll want a pair for stereo.
you will not be able to send sound from the TV, only the appletv
unless you've bought a television in the last year or 2, and it supports airplay2.
I have the sonos beam, it's a great sounding bar, connects via HDMI (your TV needs to support ARC) so you can control volume using the aTV remote (and maybe your TV remote)
it supports airplay2, so you can send audio to it from any apple device.
it has alexa, and ok google (no siri now, or probably in the future, thanks apple)
and you're able to connect pretty much any music streaming service, and play music directly on the sound bar without it having to go through your phone (there's computer and phone apps to control, and you can use the voice assistant also)
unless you've bought a television in the last year or 2, and it supports airplay2.
I have the sonos beam, it's a great sounding bar, connects via HDMI (your TV needs to support ARC) so you can control volume using the aTV remote (and maybe your TV remote)
it supports airplay2, so you can send audio to it from any apple device.
it has alexa, and ok google (no siri now, or probably in the future, thanks apple)
and you're able to connect pretty much any music streaming service, and play music directly on the sound bar without it having to go through your phone (there's computer and phone apps to control, and you can use the voice assistant also)
Nice catch. tv is only thing plugged into my tv. I don’t have satellite anymore so using my HomePods only works for me.
You can also create a Shortcut to send the audio to the HomePod and at a specific volume level to bypass having to enter it in the Airplay screen. I have a Shortcut for the kids called “It’s Disney Time.” Opens the Living Room ATV remote app on my iPhone, turns on the TV and awakens the ATV (HDMI CEC required), Opens the Disney+ app on my ATV, Airplays to my Living Room HomePods at 75% volume.
Shortcuts is something else, eh?Me too. But mine is part of my Good Morning and Good Night scenes.
![250cea282b98f3db72a8131832d535f5.png]()
![38fb4186eecb54a0f15ba2928fe5ea9e.png]()
Definitely!!! I love them. But in truth some of this functionality should be built in natively.
Yeah, definitely. It would also be great if Apple let us actually automate what we want automated instead of pushing a notification or having to do workarounds.
You can and I do. However, it’s not ideal. HomePod isn’t designed for it. It’s an AirPlay speaker so it works the way AirPlay was designed to work. Meaning you have to connect to the tv every time you want to use it if at any point you do something that breaks the connection. That means connecting to your HomePod and then disconnecting from tv if you want to be able to change the volume with your remote. HomePods do not have a center channel for dialogue. So when music and dialogue are playing at once the music takes priority and the dialogue can be muffled. I wouldn’t recommend using it in a family situation where everyone may not be on the same technological level.
Now with that said I love using my HomePods with my tv. In fact I have disabled the internal speakers in my TV. I can pretty much control almost everything with just my voice. I’ve made shortcuts that allow me to to launch every app without touching my remote. The only thing I can’t do is say, “Hey Siri, what did they say?” Other than that everything works.
![fceb9dc5d6514452e84d4ad910e46a7c.png]()
Overall, I just wouldn’t recommend this as a first choice. I do it because I already had the HomePods and when I got them I had a TV with good internal speakers so I never wanted/needed a sound bar. Fast forward a year later and I now have a super thin 4K TV with crappy internal speakers. I don’t want a sound bar now because I have these HomePods and I’m cheap. I’m not trying to spend more money because if I did I’d buy a Sonos Beam. Those aren’t cheap. I got my Mom one for her tv because there’s no way she’s be able to deal with the finicky-ness of AirPlaying tv to HomePod.
If you you decide to do it I suggest getting two. You’ll want a pair for stereo.
Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why I always had to reset my Apple TV settings to output to my HomePod. I have over the air TV and and AppleTV connected to my tv and it is a nice combination.
I need to revisit shortcuts again!
Well, I gave in and picked up a second HomePod for the bedroom tv. Nice to have great sound for watching movies on winter nights.
Awesome! Next week Will be a year for my first. And I got my 2nd one a month later. I do not regret paying full price for the 2nd. It was worth it! It may not be ideal but I love the way they sound when watch tv/movies.
I got my first in Feb 2018 and my second in August 2018. Can’t believe it’s been out that long.
Took all four of mine back as they wouldn’t stay connected and it became a real effort trying to fix it every time. Too bad they sounded great.
Non-smart TV user here. When I had my HomePod (I’m coming back btw), the volume from Netflix seems very very low. Anyone else experience this?
We’ve had our Apple TV hooked up to a stereo pair since they pushed out the stereo option and we LOVE it. The biggest pain in the butt is the HomePod constantly disconnecting. I love that you have shortcuts for everything and maybe you can help me. I have searched high and low for a shortcut to reconnect the homepods to the Apple TV easily. It’s not that hard to manually do it but it is so frequent that it sucks! It seems like it should be easy to do a shortcut to reconnect but for the life of me I haven’t been able to figure it out, any ideas?
So weird, it seems like it would be simple enough but there aren’t any app actions for the Apple TV. I have tried reconnecting the speakers by using Siri and it’s worked once or twice but I have yet to figure out a consistent way of doing it. I keep thinking it’s my imagination but I then get it to work again!
I just started flinging commands like “Connect Livingroom speakers to Apple TV”. At first it didn’t work so I kept changing the wording over and over and finally one of them worked but by that time I had said so many variations tI couldn’t remember which one worked! I’ve been able to repeat it but just once so I am continuing to figure out what I said.
Ok so I got home played with it. Here are two shortcuts I created. One has more steps to start up the TV and open the remote on my phone and and an app on the ATV etc... The other one just highlights the action used to have the HomePod play the audio. I named it “Kitchen TV” for simplicity sake. I tested it and it works. I turned the TV on without the HomePod playing the audio and I said, “Hey, Siri, Kitchen TV” and the HomePod picked up the audio after confirmation.
On a side note, iOS/TVOS 14 is supposed to remember the Airplay (e.g. HomePod) audio source for the ATV. It works for me at least. If I had the HomePod playing the ATV audio previously, it remains that way when I turn the TV on again.
![C048F628-0CF5-4EC6-AF80-5A08A1F8ED8D.png]( "C048F628-0CF5-4EC6-AF80-5A08A1F8ED8D.png")
![BAB5FE2D-F3B0-4832-AA5B-8BB4B01D50A4.png]( "BAB5FE2D-F3B0-4832-AA5B-8BB4B01D50A4.png")
On a side note, iOS/TVOS 14 is supposed to remember the Airplay (e.g. HomePod) audio source for the ATV. It works for me at least. If I had the HomePod playing the ATV audio previously, it remains that way when I turn the TV on again.
