back to JacobsQuick.tips

How to set up + pair a HomePod Mini with your iPhone

16th November 2020

Jacob Woolcock

3:33

|

In this short tutorial I’ll show you how you set up and use the brand new HomePod Mini with the Apple Home app on your iPhone or iPad. I’ll talk you through the process from powering it on for the first time to having it connected to your phone and ready to go. I’ll explain how to add multi-user support, transfer your Hey Siri profile and how to control your HomePod Mini with your voice.

Play Video

Here’s a quick guide to setting up your brand new HomePod Mini and

connecting it to your iPhone using the Home app.

And hey if you find this tip useful then please do subscribe to my channel down below –

I’m making lots of iPhone and iPad QuickTips videos

and I’d love for you to be part of that as I share more each week.

When you first plug in your HomePod make sure you’ve got an iOS device nearby

– hopefully one that’s up-to-date on iOS 14.

As soon as you get power to that HomePod and it starts to turn on

your device will then have a little card that shows up (much like when you connect AirPods)

And from here you can begin the process of pairing your HomePod Mini with your device.

First up the HomePod wants to know which room of your house it’s in

– so these are the rooms you’ve set up in the Home app already

and I’m going to put mine in the Office to begin with.

Next up we’re going to transfer our Siri Voice Profile

(this is the one that uses the Hey Siri command)

across from our device onto the HomePod.

That means it’ll recognise your voice without you having to train it again which is helpful.

Because I’ve transferred my Voice Profile onto the HomePod

that means I can now use Personal Requests.

These are things like Calendar Appointments, Messages – all those sorts of things.

And by enabling that, Siri can give me personal responses when I ask questions to the HomePod.

We can also use this for multiple voices

so my fiancee and I, who both use the Home app to control our Smart Lighting,

can both ask the same questions to Siri on the HomePod

but we’ll get different answers because it’ll pull from our different calendars etc.

Next up we’re going to agree to the terms and conditions

and then we’re going to start transferring data from the iCloud account

on our iPhone onto the HomePod Mini.

This will pull across Wifi Settings, Apple Music logins,

– all of those sorts of things to make the setup really easy –

and it’ll take a few moments to transfer that data across.

The next step will look very familiar if you’ve paired an Apple Watch before,

– you need to hold up the camera on your iPhone or iPad

to the top of the HomePod and that white glowing light

and that’ll then pair the device by confirming that

you’ve got the HomePod physically in front of you.

The setup process takes a few moments so bear with it,

but after that Siri will then start guiding you through all of its capabilities

so it’ll give you suggestions of what you can ask for and prompts as well.

[Siri] Hi, I’m Siri. Welcome to HomePod.

[Siri] You can’t tell, but I’m waving.

[Siri] To get my attention say, Hey Siri.

[Siri] Let’s get started. Say: Hey Siri, what can you do?

Hey Siri, what can you do?

[Siri] I can do lots of things, like turn on the lights,

[Siri] give you a news update and tell you about the weather.

[Siri] Now you try. Say: Hey Siri, play some music.

As you go through this you’ll be conversing with the HomePod Mini

which will help it learn your voice even better whilst giving you some practice with what it can do.

Finally to get things going we can say “Hey Siri, play some music”

Except I can’t because any music I play would immediately get me a copyright ban

and I don’t want that on my new YouTube channel.

Even though I can’t play music on the channel I can tell you that the HomePod Mini sounds really great

– it’s got a very full sounding noise and it really does fill the whole room.

The last thing to mention is that when I connected my HomePod,

in the Home app it said ‘Updating’

and there was a brief software update to get the HomePod Mini up to date.

So that’s now installed 14.2

– it took about 5 minutes to do and it was all automatic in the Home app.

Now I’m up and running and I can’t wait to use the HomePod Mini around the house.

Leave a Reply

All of my content is completely free to watch. However, to create these videos I require a steady stream of caffeine!

If you've found this #QuickTip helpful then please do consider buying me a coffee. Thank you.

Copyright © 2019-2024 Jacob Woolcock. All Rights Reserved.