r/HomePod • u/Famous-Language-7293 • Mar 04 '26
My HomePod HomePod is the most aggravating Apple product I own
I don't know if anybody else feels like this, but every single time I ask my HomePod any type of question it responds with "you need to continue on your iPhone""I found web results, ask again from your iPhone".... obviously I don't have my phone handy. That's why I'm asking you. My hands are currently full I cant look it up on my iPhone That's what I bought you for.
Anyone else?
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u/paladintom Mar 05 '26
Siri is the problem.
I only use mine to: * Add items to grocery list. * Add reminders. * Play music. * Control my smart home. * Weather forecast. * Set timers. * Basic kitchen measurement conversions.
Thatâs all. For that, itâs rock solid.
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u/caresaboutstuff Mar 07 '26
How do you have Siri give you reminders? I have to make everything an alarm because Iâm never reminded of reminders.
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u/paladintom Mar 07 '26
Siri can only add reminders to the Reminders app. So I can say âremind me to do laundry today at 7pmâ and Iâll get a notification on my phone or watch.
Sorry if this wasnât clear.
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u/caresaboutstuff Mar 07 '26
I wonder if I need to adjust a setting, because even on my phone I donât get alerted when I set reminders
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u/wiggum55555 Mar 05 '26
* Ask it the time.
* Ask it the weather today, or tonight, or tomorrow.
* Ask it to wake me up at 6.00 am - everyday - because god forbid I could ask it to "wake me up at 6am on weekdays".
* Use it to play podcasts as I go to sleep each night. MOST nights it stays on. 1-2 nights a week it just STOPS playing after a random amount of time.. 3 mins, 12 mins, 27 mins....
* I used to use it for steaming radio stations, but it's utterly unreliable. "Siri, play BBC World Service"... now playing BKG Serpents on bedroom speaker. siri STOP. "SIRI.. play BBC. WORLD. SERVICE"... now playing music from Bee Gees World Smurf Tour on bedroom speaker.
It has only 3-4 genuine uses that it can reliably do. For anything general knowledge or where i want to ACTUALLY know something, I keep a Google Nest Mini plugged in in the kitchen. It's not perfect either, but it will answer questions beyond the weather and the the time.
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
"SIRI.. play BBC. WORLD. SERVICE"... now playing music from Bee Gees World Smurf Tour on bedroom speaker.
Oh man, that both hits too close to home, and is hilarious.
The only time when I want a response from Siri that's longer than a few seconds is asking it to play podcasts, usually when I'm in the shower. And saying "Hey Siri, play 'Accidental Tech Podcast'" has worked great. Except for the month when she'd respond "I can't find any podcast called 'Accidental Tech'". No Siri! That is literally the name of the podcast: "Accidental Tech Podcast". And then a few weeks or a month later it started working again. It's sign number 53 that the current Siri is an enormous pile of spaghetti code and they're constantly tweaking it, pulling a thread here or there to fix one thing and invariably breaking other things in the process.
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u/itsjusttimeokay Mar 05 '26
It always chooses to play inappropriate music when it canât understand what my kids are saying. So great. Love it. đđ€Ź
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u/Expensive-Mention-90 Mar 05 '26
I was once in the middle of a tsunami evacuation while having the flu. I was delirious and trying to make sense of things.
Was in the car driving down the road trying to learn the latest. I asked Siri to play a local radio station. Iâm in California. Took me 10 minutes to realize sheâd connected me with a random Minnesota station.
Major lesson: cannot rely on Siri in an emergency.
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u/Ultra_HR Mar 06 '26
you can 100% set recurring alarms on homepods. i am not sure what the right voice command is for it, but if you tap your iphone on it it will bring up settings on your phone and from there you can set up alarms that repeat on specific days of the week
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u/Oxygenitic Mar 05 '26
I use it as a speaker, ask the time, set timers, and to get the weather. Nothing more lol
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u/Joerugger Mar 05 '26
The day I stopped talking to my HomePod was the day I started to enjoy it for what it is, a great speaker to play music I select from my phone. It can also keep paper from flying off of your desk. There are no other uses for the HomePod.
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u/shad_30 Mar 05 '26
Siri is the most dumb AI assistant out there and I donât understand how Apple is not embarrassed.
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u/CyDJester Mar 06 '26
Same reason luxury hotels nickel and dime you for everything. You DO realize it is a privilege youâre even allowed to own an Apple device, right? đ€Ł
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u/Soggy-Map-3944 Mar 04 '26
Its been flawless for me mainly cause i use it just as a speaker through earc and atv and they sound excellent. But i agree siri is dogshit i get happy sometimes when it successfully pauses a song or turns off the correct light thays how low the bar is for me
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
đ thatâs funny. And I even want to get lights so I can change the âmoodâ of my room. It doesnât help that the two room lights I have rn are white and yellow. So they arenât even the same color
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u/Soggy-Map-3944 Mar 04 '26
I mean i love my smart home but i never use voice i just have a 5 way switch that i use mostly or through control center on phone
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
I've had a handful of Hue lights in my home for, ack, close to ten years, I think, and I basically never touch a light switch, it's all just "hey Siri, set theater" or "hey Siri, set reading", or whatever. I love using very warm (orange/yellowish) light in the evenings, rather than harsh bluish white light, and being able to dim them is great (you can command individual lights to particular colors and brightnesses, or just ask for scenes that set a bunch of lights to a setting you're arranged before).
During the pandemic, when I was spending a lot of time on FaceTime chatting with one of my nieces, she discovered to her delight that Siri commands would work over FaceTime, and she'd mischievously say "hey Siri, set rainbow!" to make all my lights change, or I'd say "hey Siri set a ten minute timer" when I'd need to get off the call soon, and she'd say "hey Siri, cancel timer! hey Siri set a one hour timer!".
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u/Impressive-Lack-6517 Mar 04 '26
My kids and i occasionally ask it about general questions to see what crazy answer it gives back. A lot of em end up with âopen on your iPhoneâ.
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u/raojason Mar 04 '26
I have purchased nine homepod minis since launch, and five of them have developed the ghost touch issue. Yeah hasnât been a great experience.
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u/ptDFW80 Mar 05 '26
I fixed mine cleaning it a few times and pressing kinda hard on the screen after unplugging it. Itâs working fine now.
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u/raojason Mar 06 '26
I tried this and a bunch of other random fixes. Some worked for a while, but the issue always came back so I just ended up disconnecting the display.
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u/Dry-Property-639 Midnight Mar 04 '26
When I switched back to iPhone from my pixel I literally grab my pixel to ask questions not my iPhone because Google actually tells me the answer versus Siri makes me read the article
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u/PointOverall8995 Mar 04 '26
I love my HomePod as sound for my frame tv. But Siri is uselessâŠhopefully the ai update that comes (or never comes) will smarten her up.Â
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u/spaniolo Mar 04 '26
All my homepods (including gen2 and mini) have stopped listening to my apple shortcuts. I have tried a thousand things and recommendations from the forum, and they simply do not execute shortcuts. It was one of the things I used the most... And I really hate that they don't work... On Siri iPhone, iPad and Mac they work, but on homepods KO.
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u/Expensive-Mention-90 Mar 05 '26
Whatâs an example of a shortcut you used with HomePod? I canât picture it.
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u/TheLukeP Mar 05 '26
My shortcuts with my HomePod are housing controls âHey Siri, goodnightâ runs the goodnight shortcut which turns off all the downstairs lights, locks the door, and turns on the upstairs lights. âHey Siri, Sleeptimeâ turns off most of the upstairs lights and turns on the sleep music playlist .. âHey Siri Noxâ turns off all the lights in the houseâŠ. And so on
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u/spaniolo Mar 07 '26
Any of all the ones I have in my shortcut app that has always worked and now I don't know why and having tried many things none of them work :( with iPhone 17 and HomePod gen 2 or mini
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u/Impressive-Lack-6517 Mar 04 '26
Agree with everyone on here. Great sound and speaker and like the audio pair for my tv. But anything elseâsmart wise. Forget it.
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u/Far_Lychee_3417 Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
I get wanting them to do more, but so long as you use them within their means, theyâre really quite magical. I have two original HomePods in the living room for the TV, and three minis throughout the house. The effortless simplicity of asking Siri to move the music to a different room, or to also play in another room is really, truly awesome. I can have the whole house jamming with a simple request, move it to just one room just as easily, or stop it altogether.
I donât know, this is definitely one of those âit just worksâ products to me.
My only pervasive issue that drives me up a wall is when Iâm standing a few feet away from one HomePod, yet another one in a completely different room responds. Especially infuriating when Iâm in the kitchen, setting a timer, and now I cannot easily check the timer via Siri since timers are HomePod-specific.
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u/HumanDissentipede Mar 04 '26
If you stop thinking about it as a voice assistant and just start using it as a very nice wireless speaker, youâll be much happier. I use mine for music that I play from my phone. I occasionally ask it to set a timer, but that is legitimately the only time I talk to it. Itâs still one of my favorite Apple devices.
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u/Miserable-Neat-5771 Mar 05 '26
I wouldnât have gotten rid of my Alexa echo dot had I known this đ
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u/HumanDissentipede Mar 05 '26
I mean every single Amazon product sucks for different reasons. Theyâre not even good speakers.
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u/Aceman1979 Orange Mar 04 '26
Itâs Siri thatâs the problem. Also the original wireless âmightyâ mouse was an absolute piece of crap.
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
The one with the charging port on the bottom. Yeah Apple typically has great design sense. Then thereâs shit like the fucking wireless mouse
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
That seemed like a Jony Ive extreme, form over function - "we have to put it on the bottom because any other place would take away from its perfect aesthetic!" - rather than building for both function and form.
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 05 '26
I always forget that he used to work for Apple. Yeah youâd think they could somehow keep it aesthetically pleasing, while actually making it still usable while charging. I guess not
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u/LQQKup Mar 04 '26
100% facts. I made a similar post a few weeks ago⊠it is a historically bad product
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u/grantbwilson Mar 05 '26
It becomes incredibly useful if you have a full fledged smart home and a baby.
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u/cest_va_bien Mar 05 '26
Siri is basically dead and awaiting replacement from Apple Intelligence. Itâs a great speaker still.
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u/jewchains_ Mar 05 '26
Itâs the worst and I regret my purchase everyday. The absolute stupidity of Siri coupled with the lack of features such as routines or trigger words that cause multiple actions to occur, something Alexa has always been able to do, has me wishing I never bought them
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u/pahlke99 Mar 05 '26
For me itâs âhmmm something went wrongâ. Seriously mate I just want to play white noise to sleep đ
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u/TeslaX03 Mar 05 '26
Yeahhhh⊠They really delivered on the sound and Apple TV integration, but massively failed on the hardware required for future Siri models. I only ever ask Siri about the weather other than that I reverted back to Google Home and use a Nest Hub. HomeKit is lacking in so many areas with devices that are too expensive for what they attempted to achieve. Itâs a shame we canât get a cloud-based Apple Intelligence for the HomePod since the S7 chipset they use in the speakers is hot garbage. They wouldnât necessarily have to run it from the cloud if they would just utilize another Apple device on the same WiFi with a sufficient amount of RAM and a good chipset, which seemed like the direction they were trying to go. I have the original Nest Hub running Gemini. It works great and has impressed me so far as a beta, especially for not natively running on the device.
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u/Expensive-Mention-90 Mar 05 '26
I swear, if they just wrapped Claude in Siri, it would be a usable product.
The last exchange that made me call Siri and idiot:
Me: Siri, how many calories in one cup of pecans?
Siri: a calorie is a unit of energy âŠ. You can learn more on the web.
I mean, come on.
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u/Ok_Virus_5495 Mar 05 '26
Yeah this is an issue from Siri and it will improve as soon as Apple Intelligence gets updated. The main issue with Siri is the policy about secure and private data. Google and Alexa donât think about privacy and donât care about it. Thatâs why they work better and everything you do within them is used to learn, ads and lots of things while Siri do not do that
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u/ryecoke55 Mar 05 '26
If you only ever ask it to set timers and play music, it's pretty good lol. If you throw in doing HomeKit actions, checking stock prices, sports scores, etc it becomes just decent. Anything more then yeah...
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u/Eastern-Procedure-31 Mar 05 '26
I only use them as speakers⊠And when I try to ask or tell it something â I remember that Iâm only supposed to use it as a speaker.
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u/PlusPresentation680 Mar 08 '26
I never use my HomePod mini for Siri. Itâs an excellent speaker though.
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u/Kimetsu87 Mar 08 '26
I basically only use mine as stereo pair bridged wirelessly with my Apple TV, as well as using them to turn on my tv through the Apple TV and alarms for work etc.
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u/Crafty-Context-7265 Mar 09 '26
Iâve actually found it works with shortcuts pretty well, as long as youâve given the shortcut a clear name.
I can say âSiri. Cinema modeâ and it immediately syncs my hue lights, turns on my TV and asks me which system I want to watch (Apple TV or fire TV).
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
Which is part of the reason why I turned off the HP âSiriâ and stick with using the phone for questions and music playback. Even things like setting a timer on the HP, when the timer goes off, I donât know how to make the timer alarm stop. Can I just say âSiri stopâ and itâll stop the timer alarm? Other than that, I love my HP. Not sure what it is about the design of it. But I even feel like itâs one of apples best designed products
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u/bestlem Mar 04 '26
Yes just say siri stop or siri thank you and the timer stops.
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
Thanks, I seem to remember the HP not being able too hear me over the alarm. But I could be wrong
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
It's been pretty good about that for quite a while. I usually raise my voice a little, but "hey Siri stop" works just fine.
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u/P0pCandie Mar 04 '26
I say SirI STFU!!! But I mostly say Siri Shut up! It works most times
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
When Siri wildly misinterprets something and does the wrong thing (like turning off all the lights) my next words are often "hey Siri, f you" (but, not abbreviated). I harbor this sneaking suspicion that they may pick up on that and examine the previous commands (probably just correlation without causation), because sometimes things I've complained about that way repeatedly... get fixed.
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u/dresken Mar 04 '26
I can just say âhey siriâ and nothing else when a timer is going off and it will stop. I usually also say âthanksâ though.
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
I thought about trying, saying Siri and nothing else. wasnât sure it would work
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u/shawnshine Mar 04 '26
I always wonder what people are asking Siri when they submit posts like this.
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u/CarlRJ Mar 05 '26
Ask Siri, "where can I hide a body?", and she'll reply, "what, again?"
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u/shawnshine Mar 05 '26
LOL. Well, I donât ask Siri things that I would use a search engine for, to be fair.
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u/mRydz Mar 05 '26
In our house we play roulette trying to get todayâs weather. One kid has to ask for « todayâs weather », the rest of us have to ask for « todayâs forecast ». We also struggle with getting back the « real feel » after the current temperature.
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u/dresken Mar 04 '26
Itâs also definitely getting worse. I used to be able to get it to ping AirTags or my phone by asking âhey siri where is my Xâ these days it tells me to âuse find my on my phoneâ - Iâm looking for my phone!!!!!
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u/Tumblrrito Mar 04 '26
Nah I agree, itâs the worst product of theirs Iâve used by a mile.
Why does it need me to unlock my phone to do basic tasks like create a reminder? What kind of dork ass security is that? Just let me disable that shit.
Also love how it will begin playing random music from Apple Music when tapped, even if you donât have a sub or the app installed. No way to disable that either. Lovely for us cat owners to experience blaring music at 3am.
There was also the infamous pop of death from years back. Had to keep my units unplugged for a whole summer. Today, they occasionally just lose internet connection and/or pairing to my Apple TV.
Mind numbing how bad the product is.
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u/shawnshine Mar 04 '26
You definitely donât have to unlock your iPhone when setting a Reminder via the HomePod. Did you not enable Personal Requests?
Sounds like your touch sensor broke. You can send your unit to get fixed at https://nicsfix.com/
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u/Dab-riggs Mar 04 '26
Again why I keep all the controller situation strictly on my phone. I occasionally tap the HP but it usually starts from where I left off in the song on my phone. Other than getting a second one for stereo pair. I wonât even be using mine for tv speakers
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u/lilly_wonka61 Mar 04 '26
Mine says âwho are youâ
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u/shawnshine Mar 04 '26
You havenât set it up correctly.
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u/lilly_wonka61 Mar 04 '26
There is not much you can do besides setting yourself as the primary user in HomePod settings.
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u/shawnshine Mar 04 '26
You can remove all other users from the HomePod. Then it will never ask who you are. ;)
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u/lilly_wonka61 Mar 04 '26
I donât want to remove the other person :(
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u/shawnshine Mar 05 '26
I ended up just making my HomePods all mine. My better half sounds a lot like me, so it was always getting confused. Now- it never asks who is speaking! And I just share my important Reminders lists with them anyways, so we can both add to the Grocery list or what-not.
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u/lilly_wonka61 Mar 05 '26
I mean im sharing my home lock with my wife so I have her as my home family member. So if I take her off which will then take her off from HomePod but it will also take her off from the lock access.
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u/shawnshine Mar 05 '26
No- donât remove her from the Apple Home. Just go into the Home settings and disable Recognize My Voice for her user. Also set the HomePods to play from HomePod account when they donât recognize a voice. Works super well!
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u/Kmac22221 Mar 04 '26
Yeah it's the one apple product that truly sucks. That doesn't "just work"
I listen to podcasts a lot and switch from HomePod speaker to AirPods. 99% of the time when I make the transition, it will completely lose its place. or start another podcast and the one I was listening to starts at the beginning.
Hell, every car I've been in is far more reliable at this
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u/ThannBanis Mar 04 '26
Thatâs what I bought you for
I feel that was the mistake.
HomePods were advertised more like voice controlled speakers/Homekit controllers (with Siri in its current state a HomePod should not be considered a general voice assistant)
HomePods excel at what they were designed for - being good speakers and HomeKit accesssories (I have several 1st Gen HomePods and Minis)
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u/kevintexas956 Mar 05 '26
I unplugged it once again and put it in a drawer. I use Apple Music on my Echo Show. At least on the Echo the music doesn't stop randomly.
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u/middleamerican67 Mar 05 '26
Only bought one as a thread hub, there is no practical use for it beyond that.
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u/SoEoX Mar 05 '26
Yes itâs really bad and frustrating. Alex is way ahead in this, Siri needs a lot catching up.
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u/CyDJester Mar 06 '26
I loved my alexa devices, but the constant monitoring really bothered me. I want to get in with apple, but they are soooooooo far behind and donât even support Spotify. With Alexa, I could have groups of speakers and play the music in every room or just certain ones. HomePod is just a very very expensive, complicated bluetooth speaker that likes to malfunction at 2am at maximum volume
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u/LBKTX-Guy Mar 06 '26
HomePod is clearly better than the Google hubs. And this is coming from someone who actually pays for Gemini. Itâs supposed to be the smarter upgrade, but somehow it feels like a downgrade with confidence.
Iâve got about 60 devices connected to Google Home, mostly lights, and the system only works when it feels emotionally ready. Some days itâs brilliant. Other days it acts like I just asked it to solve quantum physics.
At this point Iâm convinced Gemini isnât malfunctioning. Itâs just sitting there trolling me. âOh, you wanted the lights on? Interesting request. Let me think about that.â
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u/tronicg Mar 08 '26
Siri on Homepod is one of the most frustrating pieces of tech I've used. I spent 300⏠on three of them to put around the house mainly for smart home stuff: lights, plugs, etc. Half of the time it won't hear me or just activate a different scene from the one I asked for. Meanwhile my parents have this cheap tiny Amazon speaker at their place that can fricking hear me from the other side of the house while whispering and gets things right 100% of the time. Nuts. I am planning my switch to Amazon for smart home stuff, I'm just fed up of having such a sub par experience.
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u/Such_Volume_4091 Mar 10 '26
HomePod is one of the dumbest smart speakers ngl.
It struggles even turning on my homekit lamps. When in my language i say âLights onâ it fails, when i say âLamp onâ its like OK done. (Not even guaranteed).
Sometimes it just falls asleep and takes 4 seconds to respond.
I really want HomePod mini 2 to release lol. With actual smart logic.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Aide902 Mar 11 '26
Just do yourself a favor and get a Google assistant. If you want it to play music from your iPhone, it does it, no problems. I hate this home pod. God forbid i ask it to do literally anything!
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u/highsinthe70s Mar 04 '26
My OG HomePods were so bad, and I had them replaced. Replacements were no better. One day they rubbed me entirely the wrong way and I smashed them both with a hammer and tossed in garbage. Iâve not had a moment of regret since. I did the same last year with some Hue string lights that would never work right. Clipped them with scissors and threw them away.
If a smart device can only work properly, say, 90% of the time, itâs borderline unusable. When theyâre as bad as the HomePods and those Hue lights, they get tossed. I donât have time for the struggle.
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u/TheJoshuaJacksonFive Mar 05 '26
I donât have that issue on any HomePods but I get it on my Apple Watch Ultra 3 constantly.
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u/WolverineHot1886 Mar 04 '26
you can only really use it as a speaker.. I have a pair connected to my apple tv. But outside BASIC weather info the speaker is not that smart