A newly granted Apple patent (number US 11974338 B2) shows that Apple wants to simplify the process of multiple users in a home pairing their devices with A/V systems such as HomePods.
About the patent
The patent generally relates to managing media playback across networked playback devices. In it, Apple notes that wireless audio/video (A/V) devices are becoming ubiquitous. For example, wireless speaker systems are used in many homes to play music.
Wireless streaming devices are used to play video to television sets and/or audio through connected speaker systems. Sometimes the wireless speaker systems and/or streaming devices are smart computing devices that can be configured to stream and/or receive streaming audio and video data.
In some cases, several smart A/V devices can be placed around the home and in different configurations to provide various A/V capabilities throughout the home and/or in different rooms of the home. Apple says that better systems are needed for configuring, monitoring, and controlling these various A/V devices.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “In some implementations a system can be configured to reduce the burden of pairing user devices with playback devices. For example, all users (or user devices) who commonly operate within a particular environment (e.g., a home) can be configured as authorized users of playback devices within the particular environment.
“When one of the authorized users pairs a user device with a playback device, all of the user devices for all authorized users can be automatically paired with the playback device as a result of the single pairing. Thus, only a single authorized user is burdened with the pairing process in order to pair all authorized users with the playback device.”
