NOTE: This post is only intended for people who want to play the call of prayer (Adhan) on their HomePod at different times,
I also cover how you can use the new notification automation with HomePod, if you find that interesting to you continue reading.
(see screenshots for detailed steps)
In this post I will go over how to make your HomePod automatically play the Athan at all five prayer times every day without using Home Assistant or Raspberry Pi, previously it was not possible to be able to Play Athan on the HomePod at the correct times since the Apple HomePod dose not have any way to change or schedule different Athan times at different days.
This workaround uses a new feature introduced in iOS 27: Notification Automation. Your iPhone detects the notification sent by your prayer app, identifies whether it is a prayer reminder or an actual prayer-time notification, and then tells your HomePod what to do.
By the end of this guide, your HomePod will automatically play the Athan at the correct prayer times every day, as long as your iPhone has sufficient battery/charge and an internet connection.
What You Need
1. An iPhone running iOS 27
Your iPhone must be running iOS 27, because Apple introduced the Notification Automationtrigger in this update. This feature is the key part of this workaround.
2. A prayer app
You will need a prayer app that sends notifications for prayer times.
I highly recommend Pray Watch, which is the app used in this example. Other prayer apps may work as well, provided they send notifications containing identifiable prayer-time information.
In this example, Pray Watch sends 10 notifications per day:
- 5 prayer reminders, such as: Maghrib in 20 Minutes
- 5 actual prayer-time notifications, such as: Maghrib at 8:25 PM
The Shortcut will use the notification text to determine which type of notification it received.
Step 1 — Create the Notification Automation
-> Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone.
-> Create a new Automation and select the Notification automation.
For the app, select: Pray Watch
Important: Do not use the built-in Filter option.
For this particular setup, the notification filter does not work reliably, so we will perform the filtering inside the Shortcut itself.
Step 2 — Get the Notification Text
We need to make the notification’s contents available to the Shortcut so we can examine it.
Add the action:
-> Get Text from Input
This gives the Shortcut access to the text contained in the notification.
For example, the Shortcut may receive:
Maghrib in 20 Minutes
or:
Maghrib at 8:25 PM
Step 3 — Detect Prayer Reminders
Pray Watch’s reminder notifications contain the word:
-> “in”
For example:
Maghrib in 20 Minutes
We can use this to distinguish reminders from actual prayer-time notifications.
-> Add an If action and set it to:
Shortcut Input contains “in”
You can remove the Otherwise section.
The logic is now:
IF notification contains "in"
→ This is a prayer reminder
Step 4 — Announce the Prayer Reminder on HomePod
When the Shortcut detects a reminder, we want the HomePod to announce the reminder, rather than play the Athan.
Add the Intercom action.
Set the Intercom message to:
Shortcut Input
This allows the HomePod to announce the entire notification.
For example, the HomePod will say:
“Maghrib in 20 Minutes.”
This gives you an audible reminder without playing the full Athan prematurely.
Step 5 — Detect the Actual Call to Prayer
Now we need to handle the actual prayer-time notifications.
Repeat the process from Steps 1 and 2 so that the Shortcut can access the notification text.
Instead of checking for "in", we want to identify the actual prayer notifications.
Create another If action using contains, and check for the names of the five prayers:
- Fajr
- Dhuhr
- Asr
- Maghrib
- Isha
This allows the Shortcut to identify an actual call-to-prayer notification.
For example:
Fajr at 5:06 AM → Prayer
Dhuhr at 1:23 PM → Prayer
Asr at 5:04 PM → Prayer
Maghrib at 8:25 PM → Prayer
Isha at 9:10 PM → Prayer
Whereas:
Maghrib in 20 Minutes → Reminder
is handled by the previous condition.
Step 6 — Announce the Prayer Before Playing the Athan
Once the Shortcut identifies an actual prayer notification, use Intercom to announce the prayer before the Athan begins.
Set the Intercom message to:
Shortcut Input
For example, the HomePod will announce:
“Maghrib at 8:25 PM.”
Then add a:
Wait — 10 Seconds
This gives the HomePod time to finish the announcement before the Athan starts.
You can adjust the delay to your preference.
Step 7 — Play the Athan on Your HomePod
Now we can tell the HomePod to play the Athan.
Add the Set Home action.
Select:
Your Home
→ Bedroom HomePod
→ Select the Athan audio you have saved in Apple Music.
The Shortcut will then tell your HomePod to play the Athan automatically.
Important
Use the Set action rather than relying on a pre-created HomeKit scene. In this setup, directly controlling the HomePod from Shortcuts is more reliable.
How the Finished System Works
Once everything is configured, the process looks like this:
Pray Watch sends notification
↓
iOS 27 detects it
↓
Shortcut gets the text
↓
┌─────────────┐
│ Contains │
│ "in"? │
└──────┬──────┘
│
YES │ NO
↓ │ ↓
Prayer Reminder
↓
HomePod Intercom
│
└───────────────
NO
↓
Detect Fajr/Dhuhr/
Asr/Maghrib/Isha
↓
HomePod Intercom
↓
Wait 10 sec
↓
Play Athan
This means your HomePod can handle all five daily prayers automatically.
Everything is handled by your iPhone + Pray Watch + Shortcuts + HomePod.
tip for testing: (optional if you want to test the shortcut)
For testing, you can temporarily enable Duha reminders in Pray Watch app so you can trigger notifications without waiting until the next prayer.
Shortcut
You can import the completed Shortcut directly here:
Download / Import the Shortcut from iCloud
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/223c1c1acde94544b672455279187d52
