[issue] Not detecting airplay devices

[yizhoucc]

On macbook M1 macos 14.1:
SwitchAudioSource -a won't include available airplay devices even if they are shown in menu bar airplay destinations and audio outputs. However, when already connected to an airplay speaker, SwitchAudioSource -a shows everything correctly, till I run SwitchAudioSource -s to switch off from that airplay. Any ideas? thx!

[jeff1985]

The same for me. Also I can not switch to Airplay via cli:

SwitchAudioSource -s AirPlay

it fails

[studio-sixtyeight]

Same for me.

Running an AirPlay device, and doing SwitchAudioSource -a or SwitchAudioSource -c displays the Airplay Device (note: it display "AirPlay" not the name you gave it —fe: HomePod Living Area

However while running on MacBook Pro speakers and running SwitchAudioSource -a → it does not displays the AirPlay device.

Using SwitchAudioSource on internal output sources such as speakers to headphones, works fine.
Hope this can be resolved. Good Luck!

[haayhappen]

Any update on this?

[JuhQ]

+1

[theunexpected1]

@deweller, any plans for this? :)

And in the otherwise - anyone know any alternatives to achieve switching to AirPlay devices?

[zuckschwerdt]

Hammerspoon can switch audio devices well and can bind hotkeys. Triggering from a shell script though is not great as it needs to go through AppleScript.

[nimrodbens]

just giving this issue more attention :) experiencing the same thing.

[nimrodbens]

created an AppleScript that selects the AirPlay device. replace "DESIRED_DEVICE_NAME" with the name of your device.

with help from u/RealHomieJohn on Reddit.

tested on macOS Sequoia 15.7.3.

the delay at the end of the script is because every time I switch to my AirPlay device, the volume level is set back to 100%. if you don't have this problem you can remove those lines.

I hooked this script to a BTT shortcut.

-- Open the Control Center
tell application "System Events"
	-- Activate the Control Center application
	activate application "ControlCenter"
end tell

-- Set the target device name
set targetDevice to "DESIRED_DEVICE_NAME"
set deviceFound to false

-- Access the Sound menu in the Control Center
tell application "System Events"
	tell process "Control Center"
		-- Find the Sound menu item
		repeat with menuBarItem in every menu bar item of menu bar 1
			if description of menuBarItem is "Sound" then
				set soundMenuBarItem to menuBarItem
				exit repeat
			end if
		end repeat
		
		-- Click the Sound menu
		click soundMenuBarItem
		
		-- list devices
		set devices to (scroll area 1 of group 1 of window "Control Center")
		
		-- find desired device by name and choose it
		repeat with i from 1 to (count of every checkbox of devices)
			set currentDevice to checkbox i of devices
			set deviceId to value of attribute "AXIdentifier" of currentDevice
			set deviceName to text 14 thru -1 of deviceId
			-- log deviceName
			if deviceName is equal to targetDevice then
				click currentDevice
				set deviceFound to true
				exit repeat
			end if
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell

-- Use System Events to simulate escape press
tell application "System Events"
	key code 53 -- This simulates pressing the Escape key
end tell

if deviceFound then
	delay 4
	set volume output volume 50
end if

[bpetrynski]

After some research I can say that AirPlay devices are discoverable via Bonjour/mDNS (_raop._tcp) but macOS's Core Audio HAL doesn't register them as AudioDeviceIDs until the AirPlay HAL plugin (/System/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/AirPlay.driver) receives specific XPC messages. These messages are normally triggered by opening System Settings → Sound.

So listing AirPlay devices via mDNS (100% background, no UI) is possible, however slow, but without opening Sound preferences at least once, Core Audio won't register the device. This appears to be an intentional macOS design choice, possibly for security or power management. As of now the only way to change output is UI interaction.

Here I created a small PoC: https://github.com/bpetrynski/airplay-cli