I have a number of Apple TVs as well as audio-only AirPlay endpoints and HomePods throughout my home. I’ve been doing home automation stuff for 10+ years, and I’ve recently begun moving more of my “front end” for everything to be Apple-centric…we have Apple Music, everyone’s an iOS user so I’m using the Home app to give people an easy interface for controlling things, I’ve ditched Echos and switched to HomePods, etc.
I utilize Zones in the Home app to group rooms; we have a “Main Floor” zone that all the rooms on the first floor are part of. There are a couple HomePods, an AirPlay audio endpoint, and three Apple TVs in this zone.
The problem is that if someone issues a voice command to “Play music on the Main Floor”, it ignores all the Apple TVs and only plays the music on the HomePods and the AirPlay (audio) device. This is frustrating because in some rooms, the Apple TV is the only way to pipe audio into that room (they’re connected to sound systems). With Alexa, I could create groups of speakers and give them a name (like “main floor”) and this just worked. I thought that’s what Zones would do in Apple-land.
Manually selecting the Apple TVs in the Music app‘s AirPlay drawer works fine.
Is there any way to change this behavior?
I utilize Zones in the Home app to group rooms; we have a “Main Floor” zone that all the rooms on the first floor are part of. There are a couple HomePods, an AirPlay audio endpoint, and three Apple TVs in this zone.
The problem is that if someone issues a voice command to “Play music on the Main Floor”, it ignores all the Apple TVs and only plays the music on the HomePods and the AirPlay (audio) device. This is frustrating because in some rooms, the Apple TV is the only way to pipe audio into that room (they’re connected to sound systems). With Alexa, I could create groups of speakers and give them a name (like “main floor”) and this just worked. I thought that’s what Zones would do in Apple-land.
Manually selecting the Apple TVs in the Music app‘s AirPlay drawer works fine.
Is there any way to change this behavior?