How to AirPlay to multiple HomePods on Mac and PC without having to wait for AirPlay 2 support
- feb
- 12
You can play audio from your Mac to two, three, five, 100 HomePods at the same time with a little help from AirFoil.
HomePod will eventually have multi-HomePod support, but at launch we're still working with them individually. That is, unless you have AirFoil. It's a simple program that lets you stream audio from your Mac or PC to any AirPlay or Bluetooth speaker. It's extra special for HomePod because it works with PCs and you can AirPlay to multiple HomePods at once ... as many as you want.
Did you say AirPlay to multiple HomePods?
Yes! Not only that, but you can send audio to a multitude of AirPlay speakers, not just the HomePod. Do you already have a Sonos? Zipp? Bluetooth speaker? Not a problem. You can connect all of them to AirFoil and play audio from your Mac or PC across all of them at the same time.
That's right. Not only does AirFoil work with AirPlay speakers, it also works with Bluetooth. So, you can connect two HomePods in the living room, your Sonos in the kitchen, and a UE Boom in your bathroom and walk throughout your entire house, playing whatever you want from your Mac.
Did you say PC?
That's right. You can use HomePod with any PC running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10.
Did you say any audio? Can I listen to Spotify?
You sure can. With AirFoil installed on your Mac, you can select any application you want to send audio to your HomePod (or other connected speakers). GarageBand? djay Pro? Plex? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Video games, movies, audiobooks, FaceTime, your home movies, all of it. You can even set up AirFoil to play the system audio from your Mac so it'll send the clicks, bleeps, and blips to your HomePod.
What about syncing issues?
One HomePod is supposed to automatically recognize and pair to a second (or third) HomePod in the same room ... eventually. If it works as well as it should, we won't have to do anything. It'll sync all by itself. Until then, however, AirFoil has its own advanced speaker options that let us manually sync audio across all of the speakers playing audio.
When you drag the slider bar to the left or right for each speaker, it will adjust to sync up with the playback of the audio of another speaker.
I've done this with four different audio sources at once. It takes a little time to set it all up, but once everything is synced up, your whole house plays back the music. It's like living in a dance club or a movie theater.
But what about my iPhone?
Oh, did I forget to mention that with the companion AirFoil Satellite apps you can actually send audio from your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or another Mac or PC to your Mac and thusly through those multiple HomePod speakers you have connected? Yeah. You can do that.
When you play audio on your iPhone you'll just use the AirPlay button you normally do to send audio to an external speaker source. Tap your Mac as the receiver. Then, with AirFoil Satellite and AirFoil on your Mac, you'll receive the audio and send it to your connected speakers.
OMG. It's pretty cool.
You had me at multiple HomePods, How much?
AirFoil for Mac and PC are $29 each for a license that will unlock the full app on multiple computers (but only one user). If you have both Macs and PCs in your house, you can get a 30% discount on a bundle pack for $40.
If you think $29 is a lot of money, think about how cool it would be to play audio from all of your speakers, not just your HomePod or Sonos. You can connect your Mac to an Echo, a Google Home, a variety of different Bluetooth and AirPlay speakers, and play the same music throughout every nook and cranny of your house.
AirFoil is available as a free trial so you can try before you buy. If you like what it does (and if you have more than one AirPlay or Bluetooth speaker in the house, you will), you can order the full license right within the app.
Your thoughts?
I know some of the iMore readers are long-time fans of AirFoil. Let us know what your set up is like and the things you've done with AirFoil.