The HomePod Can Hear Alarms

Did you know that the Apple HomePod can recognize alarms in your home and alert you about them? We discovered this a few weeks ago while we were vacationing in Phoenix. While relaxing in the sun, every member of our household received an alert on their phones. I cannot remember exactly what it said, but it was in notification center and said something to the effect of, “An alarm is sounding in your home.” This certainly got our adrenaline pumping! We quickly checked the other smart device we have in our home: Nest smoke detectors. There were no alerts, neither of the smoke nor carbon monoxide variety, coming from those devices. I was a bit confused at this point as tapping the notification center alert took me to Apple Home, but I could not see any alerts on the screen it took me to, nor could I find any notifications within the app. Perhaps this is because “The notification remains in the Home app until the alarm sound stops”? That seems like an odd implementation. We called a…