AirPlay video to the TV and audio to a HomePod

The short answer depends on the box under your TV

Picture on the big screen, sound from the HomePod: whether you get it comes down to which device does the receiving.

With an Apple TV 4K, the answer is yes, natively. Its Audio Output setting points every sound the Apple TV plays at a HomePod, and the HomePod can be its default speaker.

With plain AirPlay from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to an AirPlay 2 TV, the answer is no. Screen mirroring goes to one destination, picture and sound together. Pick the HomePod as an audio target and the mirroring session ends; the TV goes back to its idle screen and the sound plays alone.

With an Xbox under the TV, the answer is yes again. Xaar, the Xbox Advanced AirPlay Receiver, turns an Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S into an AirPlay receiver with full AirPlay 2 speaker support: the picture goes to the TV over HDMI, the audio goes to your HomePod or HomePod mini over AirPlay 2, and a lipsync delay holds the picture back so lips match words.

Why plain AirPlay stops the video when you pick the HomePod

Screen Mirroring is one stream to one receiver. Your iPhone encodes what is on its screen, attaches the sound, and sends both to the device you chose. That receiver plays both halves; there is no field in the session that says "picture here, sound over there".

The HomePod is the other kind of AirPlay endpoint. It is an audio receiver: it accepts a music-style AirPlay 2 stream, buffers it, and plays it at a scheduled timestamp so that every HomePod in the house stays in step. It has no screen and no notion of a picture. Choose it from the AirPlay audio picker and iOS switches the whole session to audio-only, so the TV drops out.

The job, then, is to put a receiver in the middle that takes the whole mirroring stream, shows the picture itself, and forwards the sound to the HomePod as a real AirPlay 2 sender. An Apple TV 4K is that receiver for its own content. An Xbox running Xaar is that receiver for whatever you mirror.

Three setups a HomePod owner can have

Set it up with an Xbox and Xaar

1. 01

   Install Xaar and open it Get Xaar from the Microsoft Store on the console and launch it. While it is on screen, the Xbox appears as a mirroring target on every iPhone, iPad, and Mac on your local network. Ethernet on the Xbox is fine behind the same router.

2. 02

   Mirror to the Xbox On the iPhone or iPad, open Control Center and tap Screen Mirroring; on the Mac, click Screen Mirroring in the menu bar. Pick the Xbox. The picture and its sound arrive at the console as one stream, and the picture shows on the TV immediately.

3. 03

   Pick the HomePod in Xaar's menu Press Y on the controller to open the menu. The output list shows every AirPlay 2 speaker on your network: a HomePod, a HomePod mini, a stereo pair as one entry. Select the HomePod and the sound moves there. No PIN, no pairing; Xaar remembers the choice and reconnects at the next launch.

4. 04

   Switch on the lipsync delay Turn on the lipsync delay row. Xaar now holds each video frame back by the HomePod's audio delay, so the mouth on the TV and the voice from the speaker land together. The delay is known, not guessed: Xaar is the AirPlay 2 sender, and AirPlay 2 declares its playback timing.

5. 05

   Dial in the trim The audio buffer row sets the speaker's total delay from 250 to 2000 ms in 50 ms steps. The lipsync trim row goes from −500 to +500 ms, 1 ms per press or 10 ms when held, and is remembered separately for each output. It covers the fixed lag of your specific HomePod and TV, so you set it once.

6. 06

   Put the phone down The controller is now the remote: X plays and pauses, the bumpers skip tracks, the D-pad sets the volume, and every command goes straight to the player on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Why the HomePod sounds late, and how Xaar keeps it in sync

Any AirPlay 2 speaker plays on a delay. The HomePod buffers the audio it receives and plays it at a scheduled moment; that buffer is what rides out Wi-Fi hiccups and keeps a stereo pair locked together. Music does not care. Video does: if the picture plays the instant it arrives and the sound plays on the HomePod's schedule, the voice trails the lips.

This is where owning both halves pays off. Xaar is the device showing the picture and the device sending the sound, so it knows exactly how far ahead the picture is. Switch on the lipsync delay and it holds the video back to the HomePod's schedule, frame by frame, instead of playing it as packets arrive. Frames are shown on the sender's own timeline, so the video stays smooth and in lip sync.

What Xaar adds on top of routing the sound

• Full playback control from the Xbox controller: X plays and pauses, the left bumper goes to the previous track, the right bumper to the next. The commands reach the player on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad directly, so the app that is playing responds as if you had touched its own controls.
• The HomePod's own controls reach the player too: tap pause on the HomePod and the video on the TV pauses.
• One volume, every knob. Change it in Xaar's menu, with the volume keys on the Mac, or on the HomePod itself, and every control stays in sync, including the Mac's own volume slider. Xaar shows the Mac's volume on the TV.
• Millisecond lip-sync trim per device, from −500 to +500 ms, remembered for each speaker separately.
• Hardware video decoding on the console: H.264 up to 1080p at 60 fps, played on the sender's timeline.
• One click to switch between the TV and the HomePod on the output list, mid-session.
• Remembers your speaker and reconnects to it at launch; if the HomePod drops an idle session, Xaar rebuilds it the moment audio is about to play again.
• Speakers are optional. With no speaker chosen, the sound plays on the TV with the picture.
• Everything stays on your local network: no accounts, no analytics, no cloud, no ads.
• A one-time purchase on the Microsoft Store, no subscription and no in-app purchases.

HomePod, HomePod mini, and stereo pairs

Xaar works with the HomePod and the HomePod mini alike; both are AirPlay 2 speakers and both show up in the output list by their room name. A stereo pair appears as one speaker and behaves as one: pick it once, the pair handles left and right on its own, and the lipsync delay keeps the pair in step with the picture.

Volume and trim are remembered per speaker, so moving from the living-room pair to the kitchen mini needs no re-tuning. Sonos speakers sit in the same list and work the same way.

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