108 MACWORLD APRIL 2020
PLAYLIST PLAY AMBIENT SOUNDS ON YOUR HOMEPODFor more detailed information, check our
dedicated how-to (go.macworld.com/h2ud).
GET YOUR HOMEPOD TO PLAY
RANDOM AMBIENT SOUNDS
The easiest way to get the HomePod to
play ambient sounds is to simply say, “Hey,
Siri, play sounds.” Immediately, your
HomePod will start playing a random track
from its ambient sound library and
announce it with a line like, “Here’s
‘Fireplace’ from ambient sounds.”
If you don’t like that particular track,
you can say, “Hey, Siri, play the next one,”
and your HomePod will start playing
another random ambient track.
GET YOUR HOMEPOD TO PLAY
SPECIFIC AMBIENT SOUNDS
The HomePod currently appears to
support seven different ambient sounds,
although Siri is coy about telling you which
ones. If you say something like, “Hey, Siri,
what sounds can you play?” then Siri will
answer that it plays “a variety of sounds
including, Night, Stream, Fireplace, and
White Noise.”
Based on experimentation, the
currently supported tracks are:
Fireplace
Ocean
Forest
Rain
Night
> Stream
> White Noise
To get a specific track to play, say,
“Hey, Siri, play [track name] from ambient
sounds.”
Sometimes other words will work, so
you can say, “Play ‘River’ from ambient
sounds” instead of saying “Stream.” It
seems as though only “White Noise” works
without saying the phrase, “from ambient
sounds,” so it’s the only one where you
can say, “Hey, Siri, play ‘White Noise.’”
When I said, “Hey, Siri, play ‘Forest,’” for
instance, “A Forest” from The Cure started
playing. And hey, I love that song, but
there’s no way I’m going to be able to go
to sleep to that.SET UP A SLEEP TIMER WITH
AMBIENT SOUNDS
Once you have an ambient track going,
you can now also tell your HomePod to set
a sleep timer so the track stops playing
after you’re asleep. Once you have your
track playing:
> First, say, “Hey, Siri, make a sleep
timer.”
> Siri will then say, “For how long?”
> Say how long you want the timer to
last. I typically say, “One hour.”
> Siri will then say, “Okay, I’ll stop
playing in one hour.”
Once an hour goes by, the track should
stop playing. ■