Last year, I was really excited to see Apple’s plans to allow HomePod to essentially set up streaming from any app on your iOS device with a media intent.

Fast forward to early 2024, and this functionality doesn’t appear to be anywhere to be found. My kids both have HomePods in their room and I was really excited to let them play some of the audiobooks that they own on their iPads to their rooms automagically. Not only does that not seem to work, I can’t seem to get any apps to do this. What confuses me is that this line:

Any app supporting SiriKit Media Intents today will be able to use this capability with no additional changes.

makes it pretty clear that many apps should be supported out of the box, but I can’t seem to fine even one that works.

I’ve tried this with a HomePod tied to my account as the primary as well as with my kids’ HomePods tied to their accounts (and to iPads, which I thought might have been the culprit). Very strange.

Edit (1/22/24): This likely has something to do with the fact that my home’s Siri devices now are all saying that “Voice recognition Not Available”, which would explain why it isn’t able to play media from an associated iOS device. Stay tuned for the conclusion of this gripping saga once I troubleshoot further.

Edit (1/23/24): So, updating everything to 17.3, turning off Siri and Personal Requests and re-enabling and re-training Siri on my iPhone seems to have done the trick. I was able to play an audiobook from Audible via a HomePod. Now to try to same process with my kid’s iPads.