The good news for HomePod owners is that it looks like that update is sort of here. If you own an iPhone and have updated it to iOS 14.6, you will be able to stream lossless audio from your iPhone to the HomePod. However, this isn’t quite the promised update we were hoping for, but that will come later.
Instead, this seems to be some kind of workaround where if you don’t mind streaming through your iPhone, this could be a good alternative until the update arrives. For those unfamiliar, the HomePod is similar to Sonos’ speakers where you can stream music directly through it instead of having to rely on a paired device like other regular Bluetooth speakers.
You will need to stream it over AirPlay and it needs to show the icon as “iPhone -> HomePod”, otherwise it will just stream in regular quality. It seems like a lot of hoops to jump through just for lossless audio, but it’s what you’ll have to deal with for now.