New hints about a HomePod with screen in the tvOS 17.4 beta

In recent weeks, something seems to be moving in Cupertino around HomePods. A few days ago we told you about the reappearance of the homeOS concept in the tvOS 17.4 beta, a possible operating system for a product that could centralize home automation, such as a HomePod with screen. A week later, evidence emerged that A device with an A15 Bionic chip could run the tvOS 17.4 beta.

Are we facing the imminent arrival of a touchscreen HomePod?

Will the HomePod finally arrive with a screen?

This new information which we are echoing today is entirely in line with the latest leaks concerning the possible arrival of a HomePod with touch screen,

which could be placed on the top screen with a circular screen or with a hybrid product that would mix a HomePod with an iPad mini.

Source code for tvOS 17.4 betas reveals that there is a new device with code “Z314” which is able to work with this operating system. This device has a A15 Bionic chip, which, as 9to5mac points out, corresponds to the chip that the iPad mini 6 also has. Remember that one of the peculiarities of HomePods is that they work with tvOS but they do it without a user interface, which could change if we finally see homeOS, a mix between iOS and tvOS.

Additionally, the identifiers for this device indicate that there are internal development and production versions, which could indicate that the possible new device would already be at a fairly advanced stage of its creation. Finally, tvOS 17.4 adds images on HomePod when using the SwiftUI kit. And on the other hand, it was added hang the plotter (user interface debugging process) to tvOS 17.4. And that’s weird considering tvOS doesn’t have a UI for the HomePod.