How to Use Spotify With HomePod Through AirPlay

Apple's new HomePod smart speaker is designed primarily for Apple devices, and it's heavily tied to the Apple ecosystem. Natively, you can only stream music on the HomePod through an Apple Music subscription, iTunes purchases, or iTunes Match content uploaded to iCloud Music Library.

It might sound like you're out of luck if you subscribe to a third-party music service like Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Prime Music, Google Play Music, Tidal, or another option, but it's not impossible -- you can still play content from these services to HomePod, you'll just need to use AirPlay to do it.

With most music apps, you can start up a song and then choose a device to play to right from within the app. These instructions will be specific to Spotify.

Open Spotify and choose a track to play.

On the main screen that shows song details, tap on "Devices Available."

Choose "More Devices."

Tap on the icon for your HomePod, and music will be streamed directly to it.

Here's an alternative method that works with Spotify and all other music apps:

Start a song in Spotify or another app.

Open the Control Center on the iPhone or iPad.

3D Touch or long press on the music widget.

Tap on the AirPlay icon in the upper right side of the widget.

Select the HomePod icon.

It will take a few seconds for the iPhone or iPad to connect to HomePod, but once it's connected, your music will be streamed to HomePod from your iPhone.

You generally need an Apple device to stream music to the HomePod because it requires AirPlay functionality, but some HTC phones support AirPlay, and there are unofficial third-party Android apps that work with AirPlay, so these devices may also work with the HomePod. You can't, however, connect devices to the HomePod over a Bluetooth connection.

When streaming music to HomePod through AirPlay, you're not going to have full Siri support, but you can use Siri to play/pause music, change the volume, and change music tracks.

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Top Rated Comments

(View all)

penajmz

27 weeks ago

Seems like a pain in the ass.

I'll stick with my Echo and Sonos.

Seriously? Lol

Rating: 12 Votes

levitynyc

27 weeks ago

Seems like a pain in the ass.

I'll stick with my Echo and Sonos.

Rating: 7 Votes

GadgetBen

27 weeks ago

Just get Apple Music! You own an iPhone!

Rating: 4 Votes

unobtainium

27 weeks ago

Just get Apple Music! You own an iPhone!

Apple Music sucks.

Specifically
- Music discovery sucks compared to Spotify
- Lack of year-end playlists (your most listened tracks etc.) and other fun features...sucks
- UI sucks
- Lack of free tier sucks for some people
- In conclusion, Apple Music sucks and the only reason to get it instead of Spotify is if you’re desperate to be as far up Apple’s #*@# as possible.

Rating: 4 Votes

bpp85

27 weeks ago

It’s amazing to see how fast technology has advanced that now we are like “omg I can’t activate my speaker by voice to play music through my app of choice so I have to use AirPlay :eek:“

Rating: 4 Votes

dlemmon

27 weeks ago

Seems like a pain in the ass.

I'll stick with my Echo and Sonos.

The struggle is real.

Rating: 4 Votes

itsmilo

27 weeks ago

Or ...I don’t know... You could just switch to Apple Music and be done with it. The price is the same and you get Siri support. I had both on iOS and only saw limitations using Spotify.

AM sucks ass tho. I would literally pay twice as much for Spotify just for their categories and playlists

Are you serious? A few years back AirPlay was considered the most user friendly way to play your music wirelessly. And now it has degraded to a pita?

Spotify Connect is great cuz it actually streams from the speaker and you just use another device to control it so it doesnt interrupt anything on the device you are controling it with and has little to no impact on battery life cuz it doesnt need to constantly push the stream to the speaker. With airplay on the other hand i actually have to stream it to the HomePod from the iPhone

Rating: 3 Votes

skorpeon

27 weeks ago

there is an App, SongShift, to change all your playlist from not only Spotify but others like audeeze or youtube playlists into Apple Music. And is the same price tag ;) enjoy your home pod, is ****ign awesome
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I wonder how well the HomePod works with older iOS devices like my iPhone 4, 5C and iPhone 7+ on iOS 10?

it doesn't matter what device you use. it work's on its own. it's having his own A8 chip processor and is linked to your apple music through wi-fi ) nothing to do with you iphone 4 ;) although I think for 4's, 5's owners is time to upgrade

Rating: 3 Votes