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Sonos Beam Homekit – stop music playing from Sonos app

  • 4 January 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 567 views

I’ve recently bought Sonos Beam and I’m very impressed by the Sonos app and its built-in services – super easy for me and my family to start playing some fav radio station or music streaming. 

Anyway, I have a Homekit-based smart home (incl. Homebridge) with scenes and automations working smoothly together. I was sure I can easily integrate the speaker to this eco-system (since it’s added to Homekit using Airplay 2). But the thing is… it works nicely when playing something with Airplay – at that time I can pause the music easily from HK. But though I cannot integrate the speaker to be paused/stopped using the “Shut off” scene (which turns off all unnecessary devices when I’m leaving home or going to sleep). Basically, if I play something using Sonos app, the Sonos speaker is Home stays as turned off and says “not playing”.

Is there any way to easily integrate the Sonos speakers with Homekit in a way that music played through the Sonos app can be paused/stopped? I saw a few Homebridge plugins but I’m not sure which one would be best to simply expose Sonos Beam as a speaker playing something (if it really plays, not specifically by Airplay) and stop the music when I’m leaving home by the automations.

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Best answer by Jamie A 6 January 2023, 14:30

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Userlevel 7
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Hi @pandizajner, welcome to the Sonos Community!

After looking into our Homekit integration, you need to use Siri to start playback, skip, stop or adjust the volume. Sonos integration includes: Sonos listed in the Homekit app, utilizing Siri for playback to specific Sonos zones, and the ability to rename Sonos zones within the HomeKit app.

I don’t see any documentation on our end for using scenes or automations to control these core functionalities and I don’t use Homekit myself so I don’t know the exact ins and outs. Unless some other community members use Homekit and can confirm the commands above work with scenes and automation, then it’s likely we only support their use with Siri.

It might also be worth reaching out to Apple Support for more information, as they’ll have more insight to Homekit than we will. 

I hope this information helps!

@Jamie A Hey! Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, neither Siri nor the Home app don’t discover the speaker is playing when I’m playing music from the Sonos app (not through the AirPlay).
Checking the speaker in the Home app ends up with “Not Playing” unless it’s played using AirPlay. Same for Siri, asking here to pause/stop music initialized by the Sonos app doesn’t work.

Userlevel 7
Badge +15

Hi @pandizajner

I’m not sure why your devices aren’t showing as playing in the Apple Home app if they are Airplay 2 compatible, granted I don’t use the Apple Home app, so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to look.

I’d suggest removing and re-adding Sonos to the Apple Home app using these steps:

  1. Open the Apple Home app on your iOS device.
  2. Tap the + in the top right corner.
  3. Tap Add Accessory.
  4. Tap I Don’t Have a Code or Cannot Scan.
  5. Tap the product you want to add.
  6. Pick the same room name used in the Sonos app.

If you follow these steps and you’re still not able to control playback properly using Apple Home or Siri, I’d suggest checking with Apple. If you can control your speakers without issue from our app, it would mean that signals or commands from Apple Home are not reaching the Sonos system.