My home is set up to stream music locally. In my office, I have a Sonos Amp, which uses AirPlay 2. I stream to it either from my iMac (which is in the office) or from my iPhone or iPad, when I’m sitting in my comfy chair reading. In the bedroom, I have a stereo pair of HomePods, and in the kitchen, I have a Sonos One. All of these devices are available when I stream music from my Mac, or from my iPhone or iPad.
But if I’m not in my office, I don’t always stream music from my iOS devices. My iCloud Music Library is only a limited subset of my full library, and not all my music is available on Apple Music. So I often want to stream from my iMac to, say, the bedroom. I would like to be able to do this from one of my iOS devices, using the Remote app, but this isn’t possible: the HomePods don’t show up in its AirPlay target list.
If I start streaming on my iMac, send the music to my HomePods, then go to the bedroom, I can control the playback with the Remote app, but I cannot initiate a stream to the HomePods using Remote. I’m not alone; this has been the case since the release of the HomePod, and plenty of people who own these devices wonder why this is not possible.
There’s no workaround, but this is really annoying. I don’t know why Apple doesn’t allow this; technically, it should be simple. Or are they really trying to push people toward only using Apple Music and Siri on the HomePod?