I recently switched from Sonos w/ Alexa integration to multiple HomePods in my house. I have one in each of my kids rooms to play lullaby music at bedtime and a stereo pair in the living room.
Sonos, while klunky, seemed to be much easier to use. In the Sonos app, I could pick the room I wanted to manipulate. The final straw for giving up on Sonos (even after they intentionally bricked my Play 5 because it was unplugged too long during a move) was the devices randomly dropping from my setup and needing to be factory reset multiple times.
With the HomePods, it seems like the only way to get to a specific HomePod to control is to tap on the AirPlay in the Now Playing in the Control Center then tap on “Control other Speakers & TVs” then tap on the specific speaker and the randomly click in a spot to open up the Music app for that HomePod. Once inside the Music App, I don’t see any way to change what HomePod I’m controlling, so if I went into the wrong one, I have to repeat all of those steps. Am I crazy and missing something?
Also, using Siri, I’ll tell the HomePod to play a lullaby playlist we have created. Every time, the “Autoplay (the infinity icon)” is on. If we forget to go to the phone (which defeats the purpose of using Siri) and turn off Autoplay, some random music starts playing and wakes up the kids.
You can control each HomePod by long pressing it in the Home app.
I haven’t owned Sonos, but it seems that you might be more accustomed to controlling them from a device, rather than their being independent devices. For instance, for playing things in certain rooms, I just ask for what I want while in the room (speaking to the HomePod), “Hey Siri, play Billie Eilish” and off she goes. If I’m moving rooms, I say, “Hey Siri, play this in the living room too.” or “Hey Siri, play this everywhere.” “Hey Siri, play Giant Steps in the office”, etc.
I never use playlists, but found this article that is applicable. Looks like it works like other commands you speak to the HomePods.
An interesting thing I just discovered, is that you can tap the HomePod with your phone to transfer the music that is playing to or from the phone or HomePod. So if Four Seasons is playing on a HomePod and you want to take the other two seasons with you, just tap the HomePod with your phone and your phone will begin playing. You could tap another HomePod with your phone, and Four Seasons would resume on that HomePod. Pretty slick.
Thanks for the info. Just tried the tap feature and, while it took a few times for it to transfer the first time, it seems to be working reliably.
Up to now HomePod Siri has been the dullest tool in the shed and I’ve given up asking her for anything except the time or weather. Just been streaming music to the speaker from IOS. Might try again after I read the article.