The HomePod and HomePod mini are very good quality speakers and they can perfectly help to surround you in a series or movie. Therefore connecting them to a television is a great incentive, but is it possible to connect a HomePod to a television? Yes, you can, although with a series of limitations. Here we tell you everything you need to know if you want to have your Apple speaker as a television sound output source.
Can you if you don’t have an Apple TV?
Despite the great benefits that the HomePods have, this is probably one of the circumstances for which both the large HomePods and the HomePod mini have received the most criticism. And it is not possible to configure the speaker as a sound source on any television if you do not have an Apple TV. Unlike other speakers, these do not have Bluetooth technology to use and do not have a connector that allows them to physically join the television.
Obviously we cannot recommend the purchase of an Apple TV just for this, but if you do not have a Smart TV or want to enjoy a better interface in which you have to enjoy multimedia content and even games, the fact of being able to connect a HomePod to it it can be a great incentive. If you also opt for the most recent model, you will find even more advantages in this connection as we will comment on in the corresponding section of this post.
With a 2017 Apple TV HD or 4K
Also known as 4th and 5th generation Apple TVs respectively, these devices allow you to configure a HomePod as an audio output. It also allows you to do it in stereo if you have more than one speaker and you have previously configured them like this.
Limitations
Despite having an Apple TV, you should know that there are also limitations when the HomePod is the audio output of your television. If you have one of these you should know that the main handicap is that you can only use it for Apple TV content . That is, if you want to consume content from your television from a source other than that of the device, the HomePods will not work.
Another limitation that we believe is important, although it is not serious, is related to having to configure it every time the Apple TV is turned on . Unfortunately, there is no way on the 2017 Apple TV HD and 4K to set the HomePods as the default source and you will always have to configure them. It is not serious as we said before, but it is at least tedious.
Process to connect it
The procedure that must be followed to connect the HomePod as an Apple TV audio source is very simple, although you must bear in mind that both the HomePod and the Apple TV must be connected to the same WiFi network so that they can be recognized between both of them. Then you just have to follow these steps:
- Turn on the Apple TV.
- Open the Control Center. It can be done by pressing the upper right button of the controller.
- Click on the lower left option regarding AirPlay.
- Select the HomePod or stereo pair of HomePods.
There is another option to connect them that, despite not being so fast, is also valid and can be useful if you were not able to connect them in the previous way. These are the steps:
- Turn on the Apple TV.
- Head to Settings.
- Go to “Video and audio” and click on “Audio output”.
- Once here choose the HomePod / s as the audio output.
Possible failures in audio playback
If you have any problem to reproduce the content of the device, either due to cuts in playback, very low volumes or that it does not sound directly despite being well connected, we recommend doing the following:
- Restart both HomePod and Apple TV and since these cannot be turned off as such, it is advisable that you have them unplugged for several seconds and then plug them back in, turn them on and link them following the steps discussed above.
- Keep the software of both devices up to date. For Apple TV go to Settings> System> Software updates> Update software. For the HomePod, you must go to the Home app on iPhone, iPad or Mac and open its corresponding settings to verify if there is a more recent version available for download and installation.
If you have an Apple TV 4K from 2021
In the most recent Apple TV model to date, you can follow the same steps as those previously mentioned to connect a HomePod as the audio output of the device. However, it includes a very attractive novelty that ends with the two limitations mentioned for the others and that is that it does allow it to function as a TV audio source even if the Apple TV is not being used to play content.
Steps to follow
What Apple TV does is serve as a link between television and HomePods, so if you want to watch conventional television or enjoy content from some other television source, you can do so. Of course, you must configure it first, which is extremely simple if you follow these steps:
- Turn on the Apple TV.
- Open the device Settings.
- Go to “Video and Audio” and enter “Audio Out”.
- Once here, locate the option “Play TV audio” and press so that “Yes” appears.
Problems that could give you
Of course, you should know that, at least at the time of publishing this post, this functionality is in beta and could give bugs . In all the tests that we have carried out for months we have not experienced any problem beyond a specific disconnection.
In any case, we want to emphasize this fact because it is the cause of a possible problem that you experience, although surely Apple will not take too long to stop having this functionality in beta and be official in a stable way. Any other problem could be solved in the same way that we commented in previous points with respect to having the software updated.
