HomePod HomePod, personal hotspot and family sharing

[wbrat]

I've just bought a HomePod and I'm struggling with setting it to work as I would like to. My biggest concern is that currently I have very poor internet connection via wifi so sometimes I need to use cellular connection instead (including sharing personal hotspot from my iPhone). Two questions related to this:

1. I noticed that if I disconnect my iphone from wifi, I can still use airplay to play music on the HomePod. But if I start to share personal hotspot via this phone, HomePod disappears from the airplay list and disconnects. Is this how it should work?

2. My wife's iPhone can be connected via airplay to this HomePod when it is connected to wifi, but when she disconnects her phone from wifi, the HomePod disappears from the airplay list (even when she does not use her phone as personal hotspot). So it works differently on my phone and hers. I cannot figure out why...

I'm using iPhone XR, and my wife iPhone SE1 (both on iOS 14.2). And of course I added my wife to the Home app. I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[wbrat]

Ok, now I'm not so sure about p.1 above. When disconnected from my wifi, I can sometimes see the HomePod and sometimes I cannot. This is so annoying...

 

[dotme]

Homepod is going to work best connected to your home WiFi. In fact, for Airplay, it really doesn't need a fast Internet connection - just good WiFi between the source device and the Homepod.

I think you're trying to use Homepod in a way that Apple probably didn't anticipate so you'll experience some unpredictable results. If your weak ISP connection is a long term situation, I wonder if you'd be better purchasing a dedicated hot spot device from your cellular provider and connecting your WiFi router to that.