HomePod won't play music from iTunes on Windows after Windows 11 upgrade

Just got off the phone with Apple support. The support engineer informed me that Apple engineering is aware of the issue and is working on a fix. Not thrilled about that - but her transparency in providing the info was very much appreciated - and now I can stop trying to troubleshoot this issue.

I have the same issue. In case it helps with diagnosis: my HomePods and 2nd-gen AirPort Expresses all play together fine if I play my iTunes library through my Apple TV instead (Computers app, with Home Sharing turned on in iTunes), then AirPlay from the Apple TV. So the HomePods still accept AirPlay, just not directly from iTunes for Windows.

low and behold, there seems to be a beta for the HomePod - released within the last day or so, that resolves the issue.

Well done, Apple. I will criticize you when I feel it's warranted, but will acknowledge when you get things right as well. Well done indeed!

Factory reset the HomePod and set it up again - still nothing

performed a Wireshark capture on the PC sending (or trying to send) the iTunes audio stream to the Homepod. iTunes. As soon as I enabled the capture, UDP packets - all RED, indicating there is some sort of issue, started flowing like mad...which is what I'd expect.

Thought this might be a host firewall issue - so created a rule in the Norton firewall to all any and all UPD to the HomePod...still no.

The RED indicates the udp packets are somehow malformed....they don't seem to be being blocked...TTL on the packets is set to 2 - and this seems to be what is causing them to be coded as RED in Wireshark. 2 is low for a TTL, but given the PC and the HomePod are on the same subnet - and the same switch, that shouldn't be an issue.

Capture files can be made available if requested to assist in troublshooting

she (the support engineer) did not give specifics - and I did ask her if the engineering documentation indicated what side the problem was on - the PC side or the HomePod side. ***

That said, I have pcap files (Wireshark) from the PC indicating the PC is sending the audio stream to the HomePod...all of the UDP packets in the capture are coded RED - but the flagging of the packets SEEMS TO BE (my emphasis) related to the TTL (Time-to-live, usually router hops) of the UDP packets being set to 2. That SHOULDN'T BE (again, my emphasis) a problem, as the PC and the HomePod are on the same subnet, so there should be no decriment of the TTL before it hits the HomePod. I can in fact see the HomePod in the ARP table of the PC, so IP-to-MAC resolution appears to be working as intended.

Waxing philosophical:

First, I find it incredulous that IF this is the result of the HomePod firmware update (to ver 27) it was not caught in regression testing before the product (new HomePod firmware) was released. If this is indeed the case, the entire product team should be dressed down, and the release manager ought to be put on some sort of PIP (performance improvement plan).

Generally, I love Apple products - they, again, generally, just work...until you introduce a device (like a PC) into your ecosystem that isn't Apple. I've been in the IT industry - working in very large enterprise environments, for over 30 years. And every time I've been involved with introducing an Apple product into an enterprise environment, it has been a major headache. My experience consistently has been that Apple tends to play fast and loose with their implementation of industry standard protocols, usually after being somewhat late in implementing them at all. This isn't meant to be a discussion about whether the Apple way is better than the industry standard or not, but rather that when eschewing industry standards for your own methods of doing things tends to result in issues like this.

[Edited by Moderator]

I too am having this issue. I am running an eero network. The last thing I tried was killing IP6 on the windows network adapter and no go.

Also, I tried to allow Bonjour service through the windows FW and not working either. Glad to see I wasnt the only one that had this broken. I am running 25H2 and it broke on that version.

I also tried TuneBlade and it can’t connect to the HomePods either, though it works fine with my AirPort Expresses and Apple TV. So I’d expect both the EXE and Microsoft Store versions of iTunes to have the same issue.

Thank you sfischer1967

very frustrating ...

"Some people would think..." That Microsoft and Apple could get together on this in the

spirit of coop-atition esp. since Microsoft does not play in the smart-phone space...

I have not been able to sync. my iPhone 17 pro to Outlook Classic 2024 since upgrading to W11....

Have tried numorous things ... including both the EXE & Store versions....

Maybe in a bit a new version of iTunes will work w/ iOS 27.x

In another thread it was mentioned that the EXE version of iTunes no longer supports the "check for updates"

feature... so perhaps going forward we must use the Store version?

thanks for jumping in w/ a very through explanation!

Jim

add rebooting the PC to the list of things tried...still no bueno....and stopping the Norton firewall....nope...

so - I have an eero mesh network as well...but the PC with iTunes is wired directly to the switch....and my eero mesh is in bridge mode, so I don't suspect that is the issue.

Will they let you know when the problem is resolved? <fingers-crossed>

Is this the EXE version or Microsoft store version or.... both ?

Thanks,

Jim

Following up on my earlier post: could the cause be the recent HomePod 27 update rather than a Windows update?