Set up and use HomePod

Experience your favorite music in a whole new way, control your home, and get help with everyday household questions and tasks — all with HomePod and HomePod mini.

Set up HomePod

Place HomePod on a solid surface with at least 6 inches of space around it.

  1. Plug HomePod in to power. Wait for a chime and a pulsing white light to appear on the top of HomePod.

  2. Unlock your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and hold it next to HomePod. Tap Set Up when it appears on your device's screen.

  3. Follow the onscreen instructions to choose your HomePod settings. You can also customize and manage all of the settings for HomePod in the Home app after setup.

  4. When asked, center HomePod in the viewfinder on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to complete pairing. If you can't use your camera, tap Enter Passcode Manually and Siri will respond with a four-digit passcode to enter on your device.

  5. Wait for HomePod to finish setup. Then Siri will greet you and give you a few examples of things you can ask.

If you don't see the setup screen, you can manually set up HomePod. Just open the Home app, tap , tap Add Accessory, tap Don't Have a Code or Can't Scan at the bottom, then tap HomePod and follow the onscreen instructions.

Learn what to do if you can't set up HomePod.

If you can't unlock settings in System Preferences

If System Preferences doesn't accept a valid administrator password when you click the lock to make changes, try these solutions.

Your Mac asks you to enter the name and password of an admin account when it needs to verify that you have permission to make changes. For example, you must authenticate as an administrator when you click the lock  in System Preferences, enter certain commands in Terminal, or set a firmware password.

System Preferences might not accept a valid password in these circumstances:

  • The password for your macOS user account is blank. If you have been using a blank password to log in to your Mac, change your password in Users & Groups preferences. Don't use a blank password.

  • While using macOS Big Sur 11.1, your Mac with Apple T2 Security Chip has an issue that requires resetting the SMC. System Preferences should accept your password after you reset the SMC.