I use an AppleTV and stereo Homepods for listening to music. I don’t need a TV screen on all the time for this and prefer to turn the TV off. I am not particularly impressed with Homepod Siri selecting music and so currently must turn the TV back on to select my music.
It would be much better if I had an app on my iPad or iPhone that mirrored the AppleTV screen. A search of the AppleTV app store and other resources failed to come up with a solution.
Apple’s Remote app provides control of the AppleTV but it does not mirror the screen. I suppose I could give feedback to Apple to add this feature but won’t hold my breath!
Have I missed something?
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Any reason for using the AppleTV? Why not stream the music from your iPad or iPhone directly to the HomePods?
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I have access to more choices in my ATV music library. I can add Apple Music albums to it whereas I cannot with iPhone as I don’t use a merged (Mac /Apple Music) library - if that makes sense! (the last I tried a merge it wrecked my playlists and I had to restore from Time Machine)
In any case There are other situations where I might want to mirror the ATV on my iPhone instead of using the TV. Mirroring TO an iPhone is a simple concept but evidently difficult to implement!
Deleted a link a possible solution - got it wrong!
2024 update…
The latest iOS has added a setting for an iPad or iPhone to behave as an Airplay Receiver. So far this only works for the new Vision Pro device.
Maybe one day it will work with an Apple TV as described above. However I guess this would mean a change to tvOS (and maybe the ATV hardware)?
I might be missing something here, but I’m not seeing the reason for using the AppleTV.
I have 2 music libraries on 2 different Macs. One has music I have bought from Apple, the other has music I have ripped from CD or from Vinyl.
I play through my Homepods using the Remote app on my iPad or on my iPhone and selecting the library I want to use. The only caveat is that iTunes has to be running on both Macs otherwise their respective libraries are not seen by Remote.
Siri isn’t used at all.
Same here. My music library is on my (Sonoma) Mac, and media sharing is enabled. So I can stream it from anywhere on my LAN, including to my phone.
But I also sync it all to an iPod Touch, which is my go-to device for music playback, especially when I’m in the car and therefore disconnected from my LAN.
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My music library is on my (Mojave) Mac in iTunes; I’ve enabled Home Sharing for the rest of the house.
That said, I’ve found performance on my iPhone fairly slow when accessing my iTunes library over Home Sharing: not playback, but the initial indexing and display of the music in the library. (Interestingly, my Apple TV does not have this problem accessing the iTunes library.)
That – along with wanting to take my music library with me away from the house and in the car, like David – is why I got an iPhone with as much storage as possible (4GB), and just sync the entire music library to it.
I appreciate the advice about using an iPad or iPhone to send music to Homepods instead of the Apple TV but…
Our household hides the TV (and projector) away when we are not actually watching a show.
As well as streaming Apple Music, the Apple TV accesses Homesharing on a Mac for music, video and photos. It “just works” and everyone in the household can use it for shared entertainment.
However, to select an app or music or podcast they need to reveal and power-on the TV. Hence my wish for, say, the iOS Remote app to also mirror the Apple TV screen. Everyone could use it on their iOS device and, unlike using Airplay (to the Homepods), the music would not stop if they left the house or answered a phone call.
The recent addition of “Airplay Receiver” to iOS brings that a step closer.
In any case, when the Homepods are default audio output for the Apple TV then Airplaying directly to them from an iOS device doesn’t always work.
Incidentally, I also use the media-server Mac for maintaining the music library on my iPhone so my favourite music goes with me when I travel.