Richard's Tech Reviews

Using Siri to Play Audiobooks on HomePod using Personal Requests

Until iOS / iPadOS 17 and HomePod version 17, I believe the only option to get HomePod to play audiobooks from Apple Books was to create your own shortcuts.  The following will only work if you have both your device and the HomePod updated to the latest version 17.

Version 17 AirPlay & SiriKit Media Intents

In version 17, you can ask Siri to AirPlay content from your device.  The application has to know how to receive these requests (I believe through implementing SiriKit Media Intents).  Siri will automatically start the application on your device (in the background, if the app supports it), switch it to AirPlay to your HomePod, and play the content.  If the application is fully SiriKit enabled, it can search for content within the application to play.

This will only work if you have a very long chain of intrusive functionality enabled.  That means not just Siri and Ask Siri, but because it wants to play from your specific device, it has to be able to know you're authorized for that device.  There are other settings you might need to (re)enable such as Siri on the lock screen and playing audio with the lock screen on.

You will need to enable Voice Recognition

Apple - Set up voice recognition on HomePod or HomePod mini

and Personal Requests. 

Apple HomePod User Guide - Set up voice recognition and Personal Requests

It will only work for requests using your voice, for content from your device.  It's not playing it centrally from an Apple server, it's airplaying it from your device (which means if you try to play other audio from your device strange things will probably happen).

The syntax is just to say "[optional content type] [content title] on [application]".

Valid applications include (Apple) Books and Spotify.  (Although Spotify may be for music only at the moment.)

So you can say

"Hey Siri, play audiobook The Thursday Murder Club on Books"

and, all things being equal, it should start playing on your HomePod. 

Siri is remarkably flaky though, so you may in some cases encounter indexing errors.  For example I had Ken Follett's latest audiobook The Armor of Light, and Siri insisted I did not.

Siri would only play The Armor of Light if I said

"Hey Siri, play audiobook by Ken Follett on Books"

(as it was the only book by that author in my library).  In such a case you might be able to make a Shortcut to play the audiobook, as indicated in the following section.

Siri continues to be an incredibly surface tool, it has no idea about chapters.  So if you say "Hey Siri, go back to the beginning" it will go to the beginning of the chapter, not the beginning of the book.  You can't use Siri to navigate by chapter number or title, and you can't ask it to play a specific chapter.

The only other vendor I had to test was KKR OverDrive Libby, and it did not support the Siri audiobook play request.  I don't know if the Audible app supports Siri audiobook play requests.  I also wasn't set up to test whether you can use Siri to play the audiobooks that Spotify now offers.

Here's a screenshot of example Siri audiobook phrases that are enabled by SiriKit Media Intents, from a previous blog post about audiobooks on smart speakers:

Previously - Using Shortcuts

(Apple) Books supports a shortcut to play a specific audiobook.  Create a Play Current Audiobook shortcut and then edit it to play the specific book you want.  It will just name it "Play Audiobook" by default, but you can rename the shortcut to be "Play Audiobook [title]".

If you have Personal Requests enabled, Siri will match shortcuts (by name) ahead of all other possibilities, including its own built-in functions.

See e.g. Shortcuts User Guide and Use Siri to run shortcuts with your voice.

SIDEBAR: Sleep Timer

See my blog post Setting a sleep timer on HomePod or iOS if you'd rather not have your audiobook playing all night.

Conclusion

I'm kind of amazed it has taken this long for Apple to finally enable you to easily use Siri to play audiobooks from Books on HomePod.

I hope they continue to add to Siri HomePod features and functionality.

Siri, Google Assistant, and CBC Radio

Kudos to Chris Ryan for the extensive and frequently updated CBC [Radio], HomePod, and Siri.

Siri HomePod

Apple is supposed to be about things that just work, but talking to Siri is more like finding the right incantation for a spell, a bunch of people all across Canada trying to say Wingardium Leviosa just right.

Siri is a much thinner layer of intelligence than you might expect.

Basically it searches Apple Music, and failing that, "TuneIn, iHeartRadio and Rogers Radio" (from Apple Canada - HomePod mini Tech Specs).

It's looking for an exact match.  Anything other than an exact match would require coordination about top tasks between Apple (US, Canada, Siri, HomePod, content divisions) and TuneIn, and the specific content provider e.g. CBC.

When a Canadian says "Hey Siri, play CBC Radio", Apple needs to code a top task that checks your location and plays the closest CBC Radio One station.  That's what people expect to happen.

What actually is happening is Siri has no clue about CBC Radio, and so you have to speak an exact match to a TuneIn channel (which also means you get a TuneIn jingle before it starts playing, and TuneIn inserts ads into the audio stream).

As a top task Siri should also fail gently, with something like "I think you are trying to listen to CBC Radio One?", but instead it often returns bizarrely improbable mismatches when it fails.

However it seems that with voice assistants / voice control in general, no one can be bothered to fix them, which is probably the usual mix of Canada being underserved plus voice assistants not turning out to be the revenue-generating category killer the vendors had hoped for.

Also note that Siri HomePod behaves differently for unauthenticated and voice recognized users.

CBC essentially killed CBC Radio Two, renaming it CBC Music and changing it from classical music to contemporary, at which point I stopped listening to it.  I didn't actually know they had changed the name.  There is no more classical music station with hosts, there's just a long list of (probably barely curated) classical playlists jumbled in with CBC's dozens of other Music Playlists.

Your best bet for CBC Radio, in theory, should be to get the TuneIn list of CBC stations and ask for them by name, being mindful that TuneIn also streams CBC Podcasts.  TuneIn's list is not comprehensive, e.g. although CBC Music Ottawa exists (along with many other locations), the only TuneIn options for CBC Music are Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Halifax, and Winnipeg.

October 2, 2023 with HomePod 17, unauthenticated

Here's my experience with HomePod 17.0 on October 2, 2023:

• Hey Siri, play CBC Radio One Ottawa - plays the correct station from TuneIn (with ads inserted)
• Hey Siri, play CBC Music Ottawa - plays (to my considerable amusement) "I've been everywhere" by Johnny Cash

• Hey Siri, play CBC Radio One Halifax - plays the station from TuneIn, I didn't listen long enough to double-check the station identification
• Hey Siri, play CBC Music Halifax - plays the station from TuneIn, I didn't listen long enough to double-check the station identification

If you're under the impression that CBC Radio Two or CBC Classical still exists, it fails in various ways.

• Hey Siri, play CBC Radio Two Classical - Siri says "playing classical station" (I don't know what station it's playing, definitely not CBC)
• Hey Siri, play CBC Radio Classical - plays, rather improbably, Hard Rock Station

You Can Fix This With Shortcuts for Recognized Users

I haven't tested it yet, but in theory if you activate a long chain of required and intrusive iOS capabilities, Siri will recognize your voice as a specific Apple ID user, and will play Shortcuts by name from your iPhone or iPad.

So you could make a Shortcut called Play CBC Radio One that would do what you actually want (Siri checks Shortcuts first, they override any other matches).

Three Recognized Roads Diverged?

Apple actually has three different technologies for enhancing Siri HomePod for recognized users, and it's not clear to me which approach they are taking:

• SiriKit Media Intents are a generic way to send different media requests including radio and audiobooks to specific apps
• Siri AirPlay lets you tell your device to start AirPlay from a specific app to the HomePod (launching the app and starting it playing, with no user intervention needed)
• The aforementioned Siri Shortcuts can be exposed by apps (e.g. Apple Books provides a Play Audiobook shortcuts endpoint) or coded by you

That being said, the burden should be on Apple, plus the content apps, plus the content providers to make this all work.

I strongly get the feeling that most organizations only care about their app (which in addition to streaming to you, send tons of personal and monetizable information back to the organization continuously), which may explain why Apple has kind of thrown up its hands and just given Siri HomePod direct AirPlay control over apps in iOS / iPadOS / HomePod 17.

Google Assistant

Kudos to Peter Rukavina for investigating Google Assistant's ability to play CBC Radio in his post OK Google, play CBC Radio One.

It is basically the same muddle. 

Also note that Google Assistant behaves differently depending whether it is on a Google device (a Nest or Google Home) or on another vendor's device, such as the Sonos.  Google Assistant on Sonos has a long list of basic functionality issues that have been reported but not fixed for years, including setting a sleep timer and playing BBC Radio 4.

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For more on this topic, see my categories Voice Control or HomePod or Smart Speaker.

Problems with audiobook voice control interoperability on smart speakers

Telling your smart speaker to play one of your audiobooks seems like an obvious use case.

And indeed it is supported.  But with vendor-specific lockin only.  Each vendor will only let you voice control audiobooks from their own store.

I'd like to see the library tech community do an interoperability lab test for voice control of audiobooks on smart speakers.

UPDATE 2024-01-12: See updated post Audiobooks on Smart Speakers in 2024.  END UPDATE

Amazon smart speakers

The Amazon voice assistant Alexa can control audiobooks on Amazon smart speakers (e.g. Amazon Echo), but for Amazon Audible only (Amazon owns Audible).

See Audible (an Amazon Company) - Voice Commands for Listening on Alexa Devices.

Google smart speakers

Google's voice control is called Google Assistant, and it can control audiobooks on your Google smart speakers (e.g. Google Nest or Google Home), but for Google Play audiobooks only.

See e.g. Listen to audiobooks on your Google Nest speaker or display and Google Assistant Help - Listen to audiobooks.

Apple HomePod smart speakers

Information below for iOS 17 / iPadOS 17 / HomePod 17.

UPDATE 2023-10-25: Siri on HomePod does support playing audiobooks from Apple Books, if you have Personal Requests enabled.

See blog post Using Siri to Play Audiobooks on HomePod using Personal Requests.

END UPDATE

The situation with the Apple HomePod is even stranger, as it does not currently have any built-in Siri support for playing audiobooks from Apple Books.

It currently only HomePod also supports voice control of Apple Music and Apple Podcasts.

Oddly, you can use Siri to CarPlay audiobooks in your car no problem though.  See Play audiobooks with CarPlay.

Sonos smart speakers

Sonos supports three voice assistants: Sonos Voice Control, Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.  This would seem like an awesome way to have multiple services available together, just distinguished by saying Hey Sonos, Hey Alexa, or Hey Google.  But that's not how it works, you have to pick one assistant and that's the only one that will be active (I can't see any technical reason why this should be the case, but it is).

However, on Sonos the voice assistants can't control audiobooks.  So you can connect your Sonos to your Amazon Audible account, but you can't use Amazon Alexa to control the audiobooks (again, there is no technical reason why this should be the case).

See How can I listen to Audible using the Sonos app?

Audible with Alexa integration is not currently compatible with Sonos devices.

Similarly, you can't use Google Assistant to control audiobooks on Sonos either.

A nonsensical mess

This is a nonsensical mess.  These services should all just interoperate.

Libby, Spotify and Audiobooks.com

There are other major sources of audiobooks, including OverDrive Libby used by most libraries, Spotify audiobooks, and Audiobooks.com (I think Audiobooks.com is owned by Storytel, it has had a chain of corporate owners).

SIDEBAR: If this looks like a diverse market, the underlying source for most audiobooks is Amazon Audible.  END SIDEBAR

As far as I can tell, there is no support for voice control of Libby or Spotify audioboks.

Audiobooks.com does have an Alexa skill with a long but reasonable command string e.g. "Alexa, ask Audiobooks dot com to play my book" but I assume this only works on Amazon smart speakers.

UPDATE 2023-10-03: TuneIn Premium also has audiobooks.  END UPDATE

September 2023 - Apple HomePod 17 "Third-Party Music Services"

Apple has just, as in just this month in HomePod software version 17, released support for Siri integration with "third-party music services", by which it means anything other than Apple.  This is basically a standard way for Siri to start and control an AirPlay session from an iPhone or an iPad (I don't know if it would work from an Apple TV or a Mac).  It requires iOS 17 / iPadOS 17.  In essence Siri gains the capability to run what are currently manual steps of launching an app on a device, then selecting the content you want to play, and then selecting AirPlay to your HomePod.

Technical Details - SiriKit Media Intents

Apple puts the onus on the apps for "third-party services" such as Audible, Google Play, Libby, Spotify and Audiobooks.com to code support for Siri audiobook control.  This is done using Siri Media Intents.  I found it was clearly explained in the Apple WWDC2023 session Integrate your media app with HomePod (video).  There is specific support for podcasts and audiobooks.

This is actually a good standardized API to make a universal experience across different services.  One can hope that the other services will add this support. 

Technical Details - Personal Voice Recognition

Unfortunately, depending on AirPlaying from a device means that Apple has to be able to tell which device, and to know that you're authorized to play content from that device.  This means that you have to enable what Apple calls Personal Requests for HomePod, a service that requires Recognize My Voice to be enabled.

This means e.g. you won't be able to ask HomePod to play content for someone else, I don't think there is a concept of other authorized users.  If I understand how this works, if your grandfather wants to play audiobooks from his iPad, only he can request it from HomePod (which is also going to make setup and testing more challenging).

HomePod 17 - Whither Apple Books?

It seems like Siri should be able to play Apple Books directly on-device without the elaborate hoop-jumping of AirPlay to an iPhone or an iPad, but at a minimum one would expect Apple Books to be a demonstration of support for the SiriKit Media Intents needed to play audiobooks. 

UPDATE 2023-10-25: Apple Books will indeed AirPlay audiobooks now.  See my blog post Using Siri to Play Audiobooks on HomePod using Personal Requests.  END UPDATE

Prior to HomePod 17, the only option was to use Apple Books with the Shortcuts app.  For authenticated users, Siri will play shortcuts on the iPhone or iPad by exact name match, and shortcut matches have first priority (over-riding even built-in Siri commands).  See iOS 17 - Use Siri to run shortcuts with your voice.

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Crossposted to Science Library Pad.