Good news for the select group of Apple Home users who prefer YouTube Music. You can now seamlessly integrate YouTube Music with your HomePods, enabling you to ask Siri to play songs via YouTube Music or even set it as your default source. This update was announced by YouTube Music product head Brandon Bilinski in a Reddit post, as reported by 9to5Google. Detailed instructions for setting up this integration can be found on the service’s support page.
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The selection of third-party music services that can be integrated with HomePods remains rather limited. Up until now, the most prominent alternatives to Apple Music that offered support for HomePods were likely Deezer and Pandora. While you can now use Siri to play music from Spotify on HomePods, Spotify does not yet support connecting to Apple’s speakers.
To connect your YouTube Music account to HomePods, you’ll need a YouTube Music or YouTube Premium account. Open the app, tap your user icon in the upper right corner, then navigate to Settings > Connected Apps > Connect with HomePod. To set it as your default source, open the Home App on your iPhone or iPad, tap the settings icon in the upper right corner, and go to Home Settings > Your username (in the People section) > Default Service.
If you can’t locate the “Connected Apps” option in YouTube Music, don’t fret; I encountered the same issue. After force-closing the app and reopening it, the option appeared. Make sure you have the latest version of the app installed to ensure smooth integration.
