gesturemedia.tv wrote:
My HomePod minis kept reporting they didn't have an Internet connection when given a voice request even when my network was working for all other devices and they worked perfectly with AirPlay. Our iPhones and iWatches would drop wifi multiple times a day for a minute or two. Drove me nuts. Turned off Private Wi-Fi Address on my iPhone and restarted, deleted all my HomePod minis from the home app, rebooted network and router, re-added and reconfigured HomePod minis with my iPhone with Private Wi-Fi Address turned off. HomePod minis finally work as expected again. I suspect this is because they no longer inherited the Private Wi-Fi Address that would eventually confuse my Linksys Velop mesh network. We'll see.
Yep. Wow.
I feel I've been a rather lonely voice in the wilderness out here repeatedly telling folks who complain about HomePod connection flakiness that Apple has this senseless bug that they've almost willfully refused to fix.
Unacknowledged since the release of the HomePod mini 3.5 years ago*, this parasitic mobile feature seems partially implemented in the stationary HomePod that doesn't appear to keep track of what fake MAC address is used, then reused, on each SSID. If HomePods always used the same fake address on a given SSID like an iPhone, we'd have never noticed or been bothered.
[Sigh]
* My assumption: The "Private Wi-Fi HomePod Bug" emerged along with the HomePod Mini which was released a few months after Apple released iOS 14 in September of 2020 (inflicting the Private Wi-Fi Address feature upon their customers).
