HomePod Tips

Grouping HomePod Speakers

Most people know that you can play content on multiple HomePod speakers at the same time. Apple calls this Multi-room audio. If you commonly group HomePods into the same groups, there is a way that you can recall some of those frequently-used speaker groupings. For example, in the morning maybe you commonly play music or podcasts in the Bedroom and Kitchen. Maybe in the evening you commonly play music in the living room and family room. When you have parties, maybe you play music in the Dining Room, Kitchen, Living Room, Library, and Rec Room. Instead of going into Control Center and selecting your speakers and adjusting all of their volume levels and then selecting an audio source source, you can do all of that by selecting a Scene in HomeKit or asking Siri to play the scene.

1. Create a new scene

2. Add the HomePods that you want to group together to the scene

3. Next select the action you want to take with the HomePods. You have four options, select the option that best matches your goal:

   • Play Audio

   • Pause Audio

   • Resume Audio

   • Adjust Volume Only

I often use the "Resume Audio" option if I just want the speakers to play anything, or if I am going to manually select a different audio source.

In the screenshot at the left, I have selected "Play Audio". This allows me to select a specific audio source (in this case a Playlist called "All of Them"), set options to Repeat and/or Shuffle, as well as control the volume level.

Once your scene is created, simply tap on it in the Home app or ask Siri to turn the scene on, and the audio will begin playing on the HomePod speakers you have put in the scene.