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HomePod Since iOS 16.4 HomePods will just randomly stop. All of them

Mercenary

Mercenary

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2012
1,243
627
I’ve always had a problem that one of my 5 HomePod minis will just drop off and stop playing. But the rest were fine. It’s not off the network. Still works. Just, stops.

Since iOS 16.4 I will be playing music and around 2 hours later all of them will just stop. Dead.

I check home and it shows them as playing nothing. Asking Siri to resume and she doesn’t pickup where they stopped. Just starts playing my station.

The same happens if I’m just listening on my phone.

It’s not a sharing issue as I have a family plan and no one else is using anything.

It’s not the network. The thing is solid. And please. Don’t post some generic, bot made response of “it seems you’ve are having problems with HomePod. Try these obvious and totally not helpful tips first” 🙄
 
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I’m having the same issue with my HomePod Mini. The issue started after the 16.4 update.
I think the HomePod might be crashing. That’s why it forgot what it played previously.
I have already restarted, reset the HomePod, but issue still persisted.
 
Glad it’s not just me! All 8 HomePods and minis go completely offgrid. I struggle to understand why?!
 
Seems some threads suggest it’s when using smart playlists or ones where it has to stream. For me it’s an artist based station.

Playing a downloaded playlist seems to be fine. Until you turn shuffle on.

The other reports suggest it’s the music app crashing.

Digging through Reddit it appears this has been going on throughout the beta 🤦‍♀️
 
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It seems to be related to one of the devices dropping off the network. Which explains why when playing a phone playlist that’s downloaded it’s all fine.

Occasionally one of my HomePods will just stop. All fine. That one stops. But now when any device has a momentary issue, all devices stop and Apple Music crashes.

I was just listening to music on the HomePods. Turned one of them off and they all stopped and crashed. It’s like they didn’t renegotiate who is now the master and slave units.
 
This issue has come and gone for me for months.
I have tried everything.
16.4.1 fixed it for a couple of weeks but now it’s back again; nothing else has changed.
This may have something to do with my ISP not allowing peer to peer by default.
I have set up port forwarding for all my Apple devices and set the corresponding IPs as static on my MacBook, iPad and iPhone but there’s no way to set the IP address on a HomePod, so I wonder if my HomePods lose the port forwarded address somehow? If somehow there is a way, I’d be grateful to know how.
It’s pretty demanding that the ordinary consumer has to carry out this pretty sophisticated network configuration just to get Universal Clipboard etc. to work properly in the first place but apparently I don’t even get the tools to do the job properly on my HomePods.
I guess I wait for another update and hope this problem gets Apple’s attention.
 
Trevanian said:
but there’s no way to set the IP address on a HomePod
Click to expand...

Instead you may be able to use "DHCP Address Reservation" in your router's settings. This is usually part of advanced DHCP config options. Find/use the MAC address, or select your device from the list, and tell the DHCP server to always assign a designated IP, which effectively gives this device a static IP.

This is what it looks like on TP-Link (Advanced > Network > DHCP Server):


Screen Shot 2023-04-24 at 11.37.01 AM.png


Trevanian said:
It’s pretty demanding that the ordinary consumer has to carry out this pretty sophisticated network configuration just to get Universal Clipboard etc. to work properly in the first place
Click to expand...

Agree 1000%. Many here are quick to blame every Apple issue on the network and say one should set static IP addresses for everything. While I agree in principal that a static IP scheme may be more "reliable"... how much more reliable is something I question, and why should it even be necessary in the first place?

Apple has plenty of resources to fully test the most common networking configurations since the bulk of people have no desire to delve into network engineering. It should "just work" as advertised. Otherwise, I've seen no Apple documentation that states one should setup static IP addresses for proper HomePod performance.
 
Last edited:
sparky672 said:
Instead you may be able to use "DHCP Address Reservation" in your router's settings. This is usually part of advanced DHCP config options. Find/use the MAC address, or select your device from the list, and tell the DHCP server to always assign a designated IP, which effectively gives this device a static IP.

This is what it looks like on TP-Link (Advanced > Network > DHCP Server):




Agree 1000%. Many here are quick to blame every Apple issue on the network and say one should set static IP addresses for everything. While I agree in principal that a static IP scheme may be more "reliable"... how much more reliable is something I question, and why should it even be necessary in the first place?

Apple has plenty of resources to fully test the most common networking configurations since the bulk of people have no desire to delve into network engineering. It should "just work" as advertised. Otherwise, I've seen no Apple documentation that states one should setup static IP addresses for proper HomePod performance.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your reply. Address reservation is part of how my ISP lets me set port forwarding and their settings are rather ’user friendly’ so I have done all I can do there. All my devices have reserved addresses for port forwarding.
Until I set up port forwarding on the router AND static IPs on the device wifi settings, my iPhone, iPad and MacBook were always wonky on the local network. Now everything but the HomePods works perfectly, so I think some way of enforcing static IPs in addition to port forwarding would help there too. Complete guesswork but as Apple doesn’t seem to acknowledge this 💩🎭 that’s what I have.
 
Apple's software updates have turned my HomePods (originals) into pieces of utter trash! I am now CONSTANTLY having issues with my HomePods. They lose/drop their WiFi connections. They stop playing at random times. I can be playing music "everywhere" and only one of the HomePods will randomly stop playing music. Or two. Or three. Sometimes all four. And trying to get them going again (and synced) is an exercise in extreme patience.

I am so amazingly fed up with Apple. They make terrific hardware but their software is so bug ridden, it's amazing they continue in business.

I constantly have issues with my Apple TVs too. And it's NOT my network. Every non Apple device on my network chugs along fine. No issues, not weirdness, no problems.

DO NOT BUY APPLE PRODUCTS!!

Mark
 
Well recently one of my mini pairs as stereo just doesn’t play the music. It lights up as if it’s playing. Home app shows it’s playing, no sound. I tap the top to stop then tap and it plays then it stops while the other one continues to play. i unplug, reset and it continue to do it. Then some days they all play fine. Then some days it does this. LOL worse product ever created.
 
Not that it makes this better, but I have a few Sonos Ones and they’re just as bad. Often one or two either won’t show up or just won’t play and the only fix is resetting then. I guess wireless music is hard?
 
I think this may be an Apple server problem. I’ve begun seeing the same thing occasionally on all my devices - Sonos, car play, and on my watch, and I’ve never had that issue before. They will just get to a song they don’t want to play and stop. You can try everything to get the song to play but nothing works. Skip the song though and everything starts going again. You can then go back to the original song and it will play.
 
djshack said:
Not that it makes this better, but I have a few Sonos Ones and they’re just as bad. Often one or two either won’t show up or just won’t play and the only fix is resetting then. I guess wireless music is hard?
Click to expand...
Wireless is hard but the next time that happens send a diagnostic to Sonos from their app. Then call them with your diagnostic number - they’ll tell you exactly what happened and if possible how to fix it. Usually the only time I have Sonos related issues is after a power outage when it may take a bit for my network to settle back down.

If I think about it, I’ll try to do the same next time I have the hiccup in my post above and maybe they can shed some insight into the problem.
 
pup said:
Wireless is hard but the next time that happens send a diagnostic to Sonos from their app. Then call them with your diagnostic number - they’ll tell you exactly what happened and if possible how to fix it. Usually the only time I have Sonos related issues is after a power outage when it may take a bit for my network to settle back down.

If I think about it, I’ll try to do the same next time I have the hiccup in my post above and maybe they can shed some insight into the problem.
Click to expand...
This is good to know, I did not realize this was an option. Thank you!
 
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