HomePod 27.2 Brings Sound Glow to Older Models

Apple is about to give your existing HomePod a visual upgrade for free. Sound Glow, the pulsing light show Apple presented as a headlining exclusive of the new HomePod mini 2, is coming to the original HomePod mini and the second-generation HomePod as part of HomePod Software 27.2. The update is already in release candidate, with a public launch expected next week.

The discovery came from the release candidate of HomePod Software 27.2, seeded on Monday, October 19 to developers and public beta testers. While Apple introduced Sound Glow at its October 13 “Welcome home” event as a marquee feature of the $149 HomePod mini 2, testing shows the feature runs just fine on older speakers too — a rare bit of generosity in a product category where new tricks usually require new hardware.

What Sound Glow actually does

With Sound Glow enabled, the top touch surface of a HomePod or HomePod mini lights up with colors drawn from the album artwork of whatever is playing, pulsing in sync with the audio. Apple says the effect works with songs, podcasts, and its ambient music feature — so the swirling colors of a rain soundscape look very different from a high-energy pop track.

In practice, reports from testers describe two or three dominant colors sampled from the artwork, with soft balls of color drifting and bouncing across the illuminated surface. It is subtle by design: this is an ambient accent, not room lighting. The panel is not bright enough to illuminate a room, though against a white wall in a dark room you can catch a visible color cast even when you cannot see the top of the speaker itself.

Which speakers get it

• HomePod mini 2 — ships with the feature.
• HomePod (2nd generation) — supported via HomePod Software 27.2.
• HomePod mini (2020) — supported via HomePod Software 27.2.
• Original HomePod (2018) — not supported.

The 2018 first-generation HomePod, discontinued back in 2021, is the one model left out. The original HomePod mini from 2020 getting a brand-new visual feature six years after launch is genuinely unusual in the smart speaker world, where rival devices tend to get feature-frozen once their replacements ship.

A software trick, not a hardware one

What makes Sound Glow’s expansion interesting is that it did not have to happen. The HomePod mini 2 ships with Apple’s S10 chip — the same silicon family used in the latest Apple Watch — replacing the S5 processor in the original mini, plus Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. When Apple presented Sound Glow as the new speaker’s signature flourish, the natural assumption was that the upgraded silicon was doing the heavy lifting.

The release candidate tells a different story. Testing of the 27.2 RC shows the effect running on the 2020 HomePod mini’s S5 chip and on the second-generation HomePod without any new hardware, which suggests Sound Glow is primarily a software rendering trick rather than something gated by the S10. The 2018 original is excluded for a different reason: its A8-era platform is long retired, and it has not received comparable feature updates for some time.

One more detail for Apple Intelligence users: Apple’s product pages indicate that voice control for Sound Glow — asking Siri to switch it on or off — requires an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone in the household. The toggle in the Home app works for everyone, though.

How to turn it on

Once your speaker is running HomePod Software 27.2 — right now that means installing the release candidate, or waiting for the public rollout expected next week — enabling Sound Glow takes seconds:

1. Open the Home app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Long-press on your HomePod or HomePod mini.
3. Scroll down to the speaker settings and flip the Sound Glow toggle.

If your HomePods are paired with an Apple TV, you can also toggle Sound Glow directly from the Apple TV Control Center, which makes it easy to switch on for a party and off again when it becomes distracting.

Sound Glow is not the only 27.2 addition

HomePod Software 27.2 is one of the most feature-packed HomePod updates in years. Alongside Sound Glow, it adds:

• Mac default speaker support — HomePods can now serve as the default audio output for a Mac. Note that this requires a relatively recent Mac with Wi-Fi 6E or later.
• Four-speaker surround sound for Apple TV — you can now build a surround setup from four HomePod mini 2 or HomePod (2nd generation) speakers in matching front and rear pairs, paired with the new Apple TV 4K (4th generation) on the latest software. Pairing still requires matching models and generations — a big HomePod cannot be mixed with a mini.
• Lock Controls — a new option to disable touch interactions on the top of the speaker, handy if you have curious kids or cats.

Why this matters

Apple introduced Sound Glow to make the HomePod mini 2 feel like more than a spec bump, and it was fair to assume it would stay exclusive to the new hardware. Bringing it to the full current lineup — including a speaker from 2020 — sends a different signal: Apple is treating the HomePod as a software platform that improves over time, not a disposable gadget.

The timing fits the broader push. In the span of two weeks Apple has unveiled the HomePod mini 2 (available October 30), a new Apple TV 4K (available November 13), and the $299 HomeView smart display, while adding four-speaker surround and Mac audio to the same ecosystem. Reactive lighting is also a natural fit for how people already use smart speakers: album-art-aware glow is the same impulse behind music-synced lighting from brands like Nanoleaf and Philips Hue, now built into the speaker itself.

The one caveat is expectations. Sound Glow will not turn your living room into a concert venue, and the original 2018 HomePod remains permanently out in the cold. But for owners of any newer HomePod, next week’s software update is effectively a free visual refresh — no $149 upgrade required.