So, I feel kind of silly.

In a previous post, I called out an issue I was seeing where Siri was unable to play from non-Apple Music/Podcasts sources. This was something I was hoping that my kids could use to play audiobooks in their rooms, but it wasn’t working and the feedback was pretty sparse from Siri.

The primary cause had something to do with “Voice recognition not available” status I was seeing on my Siri devices in my home.

I did some reading and didn’t turn up much. That led me to believe that this isn’t widespread and is likely just some sort of misconfigured state that I can blow up and start over with. Turns out, that worked! The steps to getting this to work correctly were pretty straightforward:

• Disable Siri on all relevant iOS devices
• Disable Personal Requests in the Home app for relevant HomePod
• Re-enable Siri on iOS devices, re-train it on your voice
• Re-enable Personal Requests for HomePods, etc in the Home app

After doing this, I tried to ask a HomePod to play something from my Audible library. It worked! I also was able to play audiobooks from Apple Books & Audible from my son’s iPad.

Crisis averted.