You'll soon be able to use Apple Music songs as your HomePod alarm

By Oliver Haslam
published

Homepod Mini
Homepod Mini (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • HomePod has always been great for setting alarms.
  • But who wants to listen to a generic alarm sound?
  • Soon, users will be able to see their own alarm sound by picking a song from Apple Music.

Apple's HomePod and HomePod mini are fine for setting alarms, but they're pretty boring. Standard alarm sounds are anything but interesting but Apple has a solution – soon, we'll be able to select a song from Apple Music and have that be the alarm sound instead.

Apple is yet to make the announcement itself, but MacRumors has spotted that the latest HomePod software beta has provision for choosing media rather than a standard tone. And it's going to change my alarm game. Goodbye "beeep beeep beeep." Hello "Bat Out of Hell!"

Apple Music Alarm Homepod Beta

Apple Music Alarm Homepod Beta (Image credit: MacRumors)

However, changes uncovered by MacRumors in the latest ‌HomePod‌ beta software reveal that ‌Apple Music‌ subscribers will soon be able to do just that.The beta software includes a revised interface for adding alarms to ‌HomePod‌ in the Home app that provides a choice of playing a tone or media as the alarm sound.

Users will need an active Apple Music or Apple One subscription for this to work of course, and there's no telling when this feature will be made available to us all. My guess? It'll arrive alongside the HomePod mini next month.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.