Apple HomePod gets a great free upgrade with a neat new trick

If you're building your smart home, chances are you have a smart speaker. These are fantastic building blocks, often acting as the nucleus of the whole system.

For those of us who favour Apple products, the Apple HomePod is probably the smart speaker of choice. Designed by the same company who bring us the many various iPhones, MacBooks and iPads, these speakers are beautifully designed and effortless to use.

Now, the range has received a neat upgrade – and it could save you quite a bit of time. As part of the HomePod Software 17.4 update, users will no longer need to specify a media service when requesting music playback.

Instead, Siri will learn what service you prefer to use, and automatically use that as the base. That means you'll no longer need to say, "Siri, play the High School Musical 2 soundtrack on Deezer" – Siri will already know that you use Deezer.

While it may not sound like much, that is a significant upgrade. Those few seconds used to specify which platform you use can add up. Couple that with the frustration of waiting for Siri to find the correct platform – and inevitably not succeed – and the result could be far longer than it seems.

It's interesting to note the wording of the release. That makes it very clear that Siri will learn what you like, rather than the user having to input their preferences. In fact, the option to manually add a preference has been removed from the Home app as part of this.

Frustratingly, the biggest music service provider is not included on that list. Spotify is still not compatible with the HomePod directly – you'll need to use a workaround with the content being streamed from your iPhone over AirPlay.

Still, for users of Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer and many more, this is a brilliant upgrade.