Shortcut works via tap but not when activated by Siri

Denny · November 28, 2019, 12:17am

I set up a shortcut for quickly switching playback from device or AirPods to the HomePod. I know that with latest iOS 13 that can happen automatically when the phone is placed near HomePod but I find this to be unreliable. So, when I get in from a walk, usually listening to music or a podcast playing from iPhone to AirPods I can tap a widget or home screen icon and playback switches nearly instantly from AirPods to HomePod. It occurred to me though that I could just use Siri and say the name of the shortcut. Would be nice to just walk in the door and say “HomePod”. However when I do I get an error that the device could not be found. I’ve tried from iPhone and iPad, both give me the same error.

Any reason for this not to work?

tjluoma · November 28, 2019, 5:00am

I’m guessing that the 1 second delay isn’t long enough for the network connections to be made.

Try setting it to 5 and see if that works more reliably.

If so, see if you can reduce it to 3… etc.

Denny · November 28, 2019, 12:28pm

Thanks for the suggestion. After I posted my question I tried this very thing and it didn’t work. I even removed those steps which I originally had included for the occasion that I might have WiFi turned off. I tried it with just the two steps of setting the playback destination and the volume set and made sure I was on my network. Still won’t work via Siri. Seems very odd to me. Tested on both iPhone and iPad.

stu_w · November 29, 2019, 8:44pm

You may be able to accomplish this without a shortcut. I was watching this video by iJustine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUUFMCkelmk) where she’s getting Siri to play a song in one or more different rooms. I wondered if I could get the same thing to work with my iPhone & our appleTV.

I’d previously been trying to use a voice command to get Siri to airplay music / podcasts from my phone to the appleTV by saying ‘play this on the appleTv’ and variations of this; but nothing was working. Seeing the above video I tried a different approach. The appleTV is configured in the Home app as being in the living room, saying “hey Siri, play this in the living room” then sent what ever was playing on the phone to the appleTV.

To be fair, the shortcut approach may be more resilient, the Apple TV seems to take a while to spring to life and the tv takes even longer to wake up. There are occasions where, by the time the tv’s woken up, Siri’s wandered off and got confused.