The HomePod got short shrift at Apple’s event yesterday, which ended with barely a mention of Apple’s home speaker lineup. While we are still waiting for a rumored HomePod mini 2 to be announced, Apple is launching a software update next week which comes with two small enhancements to the HomePod experience … The software version 26 update includes a couple of changes that make the HomePod better at playing music, as well as making it easier to manage your WiFi network connection in Home app settings. But here’s the ‘big changes: Apple Music Crossfade The major addition is the ability to use Crossfade on HomePod for the first time. This means when you are playing music using Apple Music, you can setup crossfade to transition smoothly from one song to the next. The song that is ending fades out as the next song fades in, enabling seamless and continuous music playback. After updating your software, you can enable Crossfade by opening the Home app and navigating to Home Settings -> People -> [Your Name] -> Apple Music -> Crossfade. You can customize the crossfade duration between 1 second and 12 seconds. Unfortunately, support for Apple’s fancy new AutoMix feature is missing. Hopefully, this comes to the HomePod at a later date. Multi-room audio improvements The second enhancement is an expansion of HomePod’s multi-room capabilities. As a reminder, if you have more than one HomePod in your house, you can play music to multiple speakers at once. You can do this manually using the UI on the iPhone. If you are playing directly to the HomePod using Apple Music, you can use voice commands to start multi-room sessions. For instance, if you are in the kitchen, you can say ‘Also play this in the living room’ to start playing on two speakers simultaneously, or ‘Play everywhere’ to start playback on all of the speakers in your house. This has been possible since AirPlay 2 released back in 2018. What is new with the 2025 HomePod software is that the voice controls for multi-room audio are expanding beyond Apple Music. You can now use the voice commands when playing any AirPlay stream on the HomePod. So, if you are streaming Spotify to your HomePod in the living room, you can now directly ask it to “play this upstairs” and it will update the AirPlay session to include the additional speakers. As a reminder, here’s the kinds of things you can ask Siri to control multi-room audio: Play music in the living room. Play music in the living room and the kitchen. Play music everywhere. [when music is playing] Add the kitchen. [when music is playing in another room[ Play music from the kitchen here. Move music to the [other room]. The new HomePod 26 software update is available for HomePod mini and the big HomePod. It launches publicly next week, alongside all other new Apple OS updates, on September 15.