As we are now on the back end of Thanksgiving with the holidays upon us, a lot of us are thinking about new automation routines using Siri Shortcuts. One shortcoming with the new system is the inability to address a specific HomePod via Siri Shortcut. You can play music through a specific HomePod by triggering the shortcut with your voice. MacRumors did a nice explaation of that today.

I’m thinking, however, in terms of a remote trigger that doesn’t involve me talking to the specific HomePod. What if I just want to trigger a shortcut that has a music playlist in it and address a specific HomePod without using my voice? Or even better, I’ve got a HomeKit switch on my front door. Why can’t the act of opening my front door enable me to not only turn on the Christmas tree lights but also play my Yule playlist through the downstairs HomePod?

For the time being, at least, you are going to have to trigger that playlist from the HomePod itself using your voice.

While I’ll agree that Siri Shortcuts got a lot further in the last six months than I ever expected it, this is definitely one of those tools where the more I get, the more I want.