Apple finally plans to make playing music from third-party sources easier on HomePods. Starting with iOS 17, you can ask Siri to play music on your HomePod from music apps installed on your iPhone.
Despite Apple providing the necessary apps, only a handful of music streaming services natively support HomePod. This change from Apple in iOS 17 is an excellent workaround to this problem.
iOS 17 will let iPhone media apps AirPlay content to HomePod
Using AirPlay and Siri, your iPhone will stream content directly to your HomePod. This will even allow you to use Spotify to play music on Apple’s smart speaker — despite the latter not supporting the rival streaming service.
There’s a catch to this workaround, though. Your iPhone or iPad must be on the same Wi-Fi network as your HomePod. But this is a small requirement to bypass what has been an annoying shortcoming of Apple’s smart speaker.
Screenshot: Apple
Apple says any media app with SiriKit API can stream music to HomePod from your iPhone. This includes music streaming apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, audiobooks, podcasting and meditation apps and more.
You can go through Apple’s WWDC23 session, “Integrate your media app with HomePod,” to learn more about this welcome change.
Your HomePod’s music listening experience will get a lot better
With the update, there are no restrictions on using Siri to play music on your HomePod. So, you can ask the voice assistant to play songs from your favorite artist or album from Spotify on the smart speaker. And Siri can even like/dislike or add songs to a playlist right from the HomePod.
Siri also will automatically recognize your voice and route requests to your device. This is a handy addition, especially if multiple users are registered in the Home app.
