HomePod mini

My whole family uses Siri—both through our phones and through the HomePod mini in the kitchen—to add items to the shopping list. Siri occasionally misunderstands the name of the item, or needs to ask who's speaking (when on the HomePod), or has trouble because the phone of the person asking has briefly dropped off the Wifi, but in the 5 years we've had it, I can count on one hand the number of times adding has just failed with any pattern remotely like what you describe.

[...] Got HomePod mini and Apple TV for home. [...] All we have to do is to login with our accounts (Even this is easy since you do it through phone) I download shows/tv to my Mac, drag and drop to Apple TV app, they show up on the main TV over wifi. [...] I can put my phone on a stand, FaceTime with my family on the TV directly using my phone's camera and mic. [...] I can copy text on my phone, and just paste it in my laptop and vice versa. I can right click on my Mac to insert image from iPhone Camera. You can use your iPhone camera on

Originally published at: HomePod mini 2 Adds Siri AI, S10 Chip, and Sound Glow - TidBITS Apple has at long last updated its smallest smart speaker with the HomePod mini 2, which was first announced six years ago (see “Apple Introduces $99 HomePod mini,” 13 October 2020) and whose only change since then was new colors a year later (see “Apple Unveils Third-Generation AirPods, Tweaks HomePod mini and Apple Music,” 18 October 2021). Apple’s announcement leads with the addition of Siri AI, even though it isn’t available yet and will arrive only in “a future software update.” Pre-orders are open now, and the HomePod mini 2 ships on 30 October 2026 for $149. The original HomePod mini sold for $99, and Apple raised it to $129 a few months ago as part of the wave of price increases it blamed on memory and storage costs (see “Apple Raises Prices for Many Products,” 26 June 2026). The additional price hike is hardly a surprise, but it does make the HomePod mini less of an impulse buy than it used to be, and it’s still more expensive than competing smart speakers from Google and Amazon. [...] Apple also changed the HomePod mini 2’s colors, dropping orange and yellow, adding pink and green, and retaining white, blue, and midnight. Siri AI Coming Soon to the HomePod mini Even though Siri AI will not be available on the HomePod mini 2 initially, I suspect it will arrive soon enough, likely with OS 27.2. That will be the first notable update to OS 27, because iOS 27.1 will ship first for the iPhone Duo. I expect OS 27.2 in early to mid-November, and if so, it will be only a short wait after those who pre-ordered the HomePod mini 2 receive their units. To use Siri AI on a HomePod mini 2, the owner of the home in the Home app must have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad, with Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language. The HomePod mini 2 can recognize up to six individual users by voice, but

I've had a Sonos system going back 10 years now. I started with 6 or 7 speakers and now it is at 15 [9 zones] Sonos speakers and 12 HomePods [6 pairs]. [...] But have received some discounts on new speakers - Unifi network & Sonosnet issues with STP. Mostly solved by disabling Sonosnet - Sonos Roam speakers failing While having occasional issues with the new app design, it hasn't impacted much on a day to day basis. [...] For playing whole home audio, I generally use Airplay integration and just group the speakers through AppleTV or iPad. [...] The value I receive from each: - Sonos supports surround sound, whereas the HomePods do not. - Sonos is tied into home automation and some custom TTS announcements - Sonos Amp works with outdoor speakers and can update the speakers - The HomePod minis are small and less intrusive in certain areas of the home - HomePods have access to Siri and home control At one point I had several Echo devices, but it was annoying to constantly update that system for home automation integration. [...] I never use bluetooth, nor felt it is a missing feature of my Sonos system or HomePods.

[...] My dad had z-wave in his beach home 15 years ago (not exactly an early adopter, but it was pre-HomeKit and pre-influx of cheap wifi devices). Between flaky software/firmware, fear of network security, device incompatibilities, and the slow but steady enshitification of all the things, the industry has been a real let down. I have a Smartthings hub, 4 z-wave switches, 2 z-wave wall warts, a handful of Sonos speaker (pre-voice assistant models), 2 HomePod Minis, one old Echo mini, and an Apple TV. [...] Sadly, Sonos's software has been on a downward spiral for a few years now. [...] The HomePod Minis replaced a couple of Sonos in our bedroom (see above). [...]

siri was (still is?) shockingly inept when it specifically came to setting multiple timers, adjusting timer duration, cancelling timers, etc I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this Apple AI leap will bring us a less stupid Homepod Mini so I can throw away my Alexas. It's almost 4 years old with zero refreshes, still running on the S5 chip from Apple Watch 5. [...]

[...] The HomeKit (via HomePod mini) is also super common. (HomePod Minis just have bad wifi and unreliable connections, there's something about their WiFi setup that's different from all other Apple products). [...] (the AirPods, for example, tend to go wherever 'most recent' sounds happen, but a lot of developers are unintentionally triggering conflicting behavior around this. [...] An email notification will sound an alarm, stealing AirPod focus away from your other device, but the sound effect will already be done playing by the time your AirPods connect, so to the user, it just seems like the AirPods switched devices for "no reason".) (HomeKit, for example, is supposed to support Eufy cameras. But Eufy cameras are garbage, despite having a large dedicated base station dock running 24/7, they can support only one small video stream to one single device, ever. So if you have two Eufy cameras installed, HomeKit will fail on the cameras constantly, but it's because of Eufy's basestation limitations, so it's not clear to me how Apple could 'fix' that) --- The more Apple moves outside of it's own internal ecosystem, the more complex the interactions get, and the less control Apple can feasibly exert over the product lifecycle, so the more it starts "Microsoft-ing" it's work. (We joke about Microsoft Copilot, but Apple has five different products all named Apple TV, the Apple TV (hardware device), Apple TV (the TV software

[...] Its basically a sonos with siri I guess. [...] I'm a HomePod (mini) fan. [...] I use 2 as speakers for my TV, which sounds excellent compared to similarly-priced soundbars. Then, yea, it's got Siri for setting timers in the kitchen, can intercom to other rooms' HomePods, can recognize who's talking to do things like send / read text messages, set reminders, etc. [...]

After disabling Apple Intelligence when you do the next mini update to 15.3.1 Apple intelligence is enabled Lemme list some of my recent nitpicks: I never used Bluetooth that much because I had no devices either for the phone or tablet, so I kept it disabled. But every major or minor iOS update was turning it on - I ofc understand that some devices may want to reconnect after update. But that doesn't explain why since v18.2.1 it suddenly stays disabled in my case on both devices after update's done. Then there's iOS ongoing conversation screen that never ever allows me to access springboard when I want e.g. [...] It just constantly pops up like on rubber-band and after few angry swipes, pressing the lock button back and forth finally lets me in. [...] And the control center changes in the latest iOS: these little widgets are stubborn, reorder themselves, can't change the size and tend to bug out to the point of flying "outside" the grid. [...] Yesterday I've got a homepod mini for all the plugs, switchers and so on. [...] After seeing the predatory tactics, dark patterns in last 2 Windows releases (I'll skip Google - because that's their default behavior for years) it seems that Apple too caught the trend. But also quality of the software overall isn't there anymore - no matter

I found a HomePod mini when cleaning up this weekend. So I bought a second one to pair them in stereo... it's quite amazing to hear how good these sound when streaming from Apple Music in hi-res audio when working from home. [...]

Adam Engst: Are you planning to add a HomePod mini 2 to an existing HomePod setup… In a word, no. I have a couple of Homepod Minis and they are, far and away, my least favourite Apple product. In fairness, most of my hatred could be directed to the (lack of) control by Siri. [...] Perhaps the new version will be better, but as I’m still using a non-AI phone there’s no reason for me to even consider an update. For me it’s a case of “once bitten, twice shy”, I think the HomePod Mini is a disappointingly mediocre product. As for Siri, it’s abysmal.

HomePod Mini is primarily a speaker you can AirPlay to which happens to have some basic voice control functionality. I'd really love them to be a bit more usable (in particular I want to be able to change the app it sends reminders to) but my experience has been that they're fine for music, timers, and basic smart home control.

On the other side being I needed to make some compromises with my life partner and we ended up buying a pair HomePod mini (because stereo was a hard line for me). They do sound pretty much ok for very discreet objects compared to tower speaker. I only occasionally rant when sound skip a beat because of WiFi or other smart-assery. (Nb: of course I never ever activated the smart assistant, I use them purely as speakers).

I’ve never been on the Spotify train, but with an all-Apple household, including HomePod Minis in multiple rooms, I’ve been stuck in iTunes/Apple Music land. [...] And I dutifully pay the $24.99 per year for iTunes Match so that I can tell Siri what to play on HomePods, but I will be 0% surprised when they deprecate that service. Anyone have a good non-Apple way of getting Siri to play songs from a personal music collection on HomePods? [...]

I have HomePods gen 1 & 2 (and a few mini’s) I have mostly HomePod Mini pairs, and a couple individual Homepods. [...] Perhaps having a series of wired WiFi repeaters gives Homekit trouble, but nothing else has issues. [...] I still have (much less frequent) trouble casting to some random room's speakers. [...] Since "Zones" don't show up in the iOS and macOS volume/speaker-group interfaces at all, as far as I can tell. [...] Leave it up to users to care if two people are fighting over what plays in some joint room - it would be a problem that reflected editable zone definitions, not a bug. The whole system is inexplicably janky: by design, lack of original effort, subsequent inattention, and bug.

[...] I was complaining about it elsewhere on this page, but WatchOS 10 seems to have done something awful to raise-to-speak's accuracy -- hopefully it's a bug that they'll promptly fix. Most of my timer usage for cooking is actually with a HomePod mini that I have in my kitchen, which I've found to be very reliable for it. That said, in part it's because until this most recent round of OS updates it was the only Apple device that let you run multiple simultaneous timers, so I haven't had any chance to rebuild habits away from it yet. [...]

[...] The one downside to my setup is that I have to press a button on the HDMI switch to toggle between the PC and the AppleTV, no remote control, but hey it's good to stretch your legs now and then right? Re audio quality, I really like my big HomePods and find they fill the room quite well and have a solid low range to them. I'd also agree that the HomePod Minis are not suitable for a living room entertainment experience.

[...] We have HomePod minis, Macs and iPhones/iPads in the house. [...] The drainage issues it causes. [...] We committed to never searching for mulch online (to hide from the ever-present surveillance online), never discussing it with anyone (to avoid social network effects), never buying it (no data broker can hoover up mulch purchases), not dwelling on any social media post about mulch (analytics, man, it's crazy what that bit of metadata can do)...not even hanging around the garden department of local stores (gotta avoid bluetooth/BLE/wifi tracking). [...]

Same transition some years ago. Siri is noticeably much, much worse to me. Borderline hopeless on a mixture of HomePod + HomePod Mini hardware.

It usually does fine but I don’t usually tax it too much. Last year I got my HomePod Mini to call 911 and it probably saved my life. Or at least several hours of misery

I had one of those Apple speakers (HomePod Mini) and the only other thing I ever did with it was speaker phone calls. It was really good that that. I ended up selling it for $50 or something.

My Matter over Thread stuff keeps occasionally falling over in Home Assistant and becoming unavailable, probably a router issue as I’m using a homepod mini but still endlessly frustrating.

I also got notification on my apple watch, while being away from the house, that the homepod mini heard our fire alarm going off. A call home let us know that our son had set it off learning to reverse-sear his steak.

[...] Someone mentioned AppleTV and HomePod mini. Newer Google Nest speakers/displays have it as well. But you can do it with just Home Assistant and a Thread radio: Personally, I pair my wifi and Thread matter devices to my Apple Home, as each Apple TV behaves as a redundant, ethernet connected gateway. I then do a secondary pairing to Home Assistant and Google Home. [...]

[...] Some cooler uses: - streaming HDR video from closed MacBook running Amphetamine to Vision Pro via Moonlink - Having a working HomePod mini in the hotel room. [...] It didn’t reject it outright but it throttled or nerfed it. [...]

Maybe it’s just because I’ve never used any Alexa devices, but I‘m very satisfied with my HomePod Mini which does the three things I ask it to do very well from the top of a kitchen cupboard: - Plays a selection of a particular musician’s work - Sets kitchen timers - Acts as a HomeKit hub

[...] Anything that's set up in HomeKit is directly accessible through Siri, and IME most smart-home devices these days support HomeKit, even if they have their own apps as well. So I don't need to have any app open, or my phone unlocked or even in my hand, in order to turn on and off the smart outlets I have in my house. (That said, I also have a HomePod mini, because not everyone in my house keeps their phone on their person at all times—plus it's a nice speaker for the kitchen.)

[...] I got a HomePod Mini to replace it and it’s fine. [...]

[...] I use it for HomeKit controls constantly, and love my HomePod mini's.

I do this on my HomePod mini all the time. [...] “Siri, add apples to my grocery list.” Boom, done. [...]

[...] I set all my relatives up with Apple HomePod Minis and HomeKit, which has expensive hardware (matter is supposed to fix that...) but is largely local and relatively private.

"Unplug your Homepod from Ethernet..." AI is useless as fuck and I own a posessed Homepod which randomly plays shitty music which isn't even mine. Homepod mini anyone? Otherwise it will go to the trash.

I bought a broken HomePod mini from eBay and repaired it. I feel very powerful

After yesterday's successful HomePod mini surgery, I bought a used one (not pictured) to put inside a Mario Talking Flower later this week

I bought what I thought was a Bluetooth speaker at an estate sale for $10, but it turns out it’s a HomePod mini. I’m not remotely interested in a smart home device, but I did figure out how to get it to play music, I think without “smartness”

For that I think you might. Also, without a hub you lose access from outside world. HomePod Mini is a good choice, although I always opted for AppleTV as I use it anyway and it is a superior choice over native smart TV systems anyway.

I’ll admit I’m no audiophile and am firmly entrenched in the Cult of Jobs, but I do enjoy my Apple HomePod Mini. Handy for playing music via voice command or asking “Where’s my phone?” when I leave it someplace dumb.

ive had a homepod mini for only a month and i've had to reset it like 10 times... it keeps disconnecting from the wifi... i really hope its just because it doesnt like the dorm room wifi, and it'll behave better when i get my own place

[...] I bought a Homepod Mini to replace an Echo and it has worked without me thinking about it for many years now. [...]

During pandemic I started playing with smart home stuff and since I'm already within apple playgrounds I've got homepod mini since they stripped ipads from hub feature. After configuring the speaker I had apple music ad for about 3 months at the top of settings where ios software update notifications appears.

Yeah that's why I got homepod minis. Despite the fact that Siri is pretty useless and I hardly have other apple hardware. [...]

[...] The S5 regularly cuts out and I have HomePod minis well within range going "no connection" for no reason.

It’s an Apple HomePod mini, and I got it to experiment. Keep it unplugged most of the time.

[...] At a second home I have HA running on an RPi and also an Apple Homepod Mini (with Matter). I wish someone could explain to me how these two devices do (or do not) interact, and how I can get Apple Home on my iPhone to play nicely with HA both locally and (when I'm away) over Tailscale (so I can do remote operation of thermostats and a heat pump on wi-fi). [...]

I use HomePod Minis solely as Thread/Matter routers, as my home is set up very heavily with HomeKit. [...]

I have an Apple HomePod Mini (with Matter support), and HA with Homebridge, and every now and then I see evidence in HA of tighter integration. Not sure where it might all end up tho. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some day it will magically become self-aware and make everything "just work".

Of course, while the ratgdo is indeed a local device, there’s still a large and obvious cloud dependency in my home automation setup: HomeKit itself. HomeKit works on the local network, it is per design not using “the cloud”. Only if you are not on your local network, it’ll use iCloud to communicate with a bridge (AppleTV / HomePod mini) that is on the local network.