Airplay not working Big Sur

[SRQrws]

Not sure whether this is a Big Sur 11.4 issue or an issue with my new iMac 24. For some reason, Airplay to my HomePod using Apple Music doesn't work after the iMac has been asleep. If I restart the iMac, the Homepod plays fine. Let it sleep for just a few minutes and when I try to connect to the HomePod, the Airplay icon in Music grays out. Closing/reopening doesn't help. HomePod(s) work fine with my iOS devices. The only workaround that I've found is a full restart. The questions are: 1) is anyone else having this issue? 2) is it a Big Sur 11.4 issue or an iMac issue? 3) anyone know of a workaround other than a restart? Thanks!

 

[Cermja]

I had the same problem, but it was a Bang & Olufsen M5 speaker (I have one in my bedroom and one in my work room). I contacted Apple Support, but received no relevant response or advice on how to solve the problem (all my problems described here).
All that helped me was a clean installation of Big Sur 11.4 and restoring data from the Time Machine backup.

Unfortunately, the problem has returned since Saturday, and once again Ariplay only works via native apps that include the ability to stream directly to the speaker. But I will no longer be doing this lengthy process, and I have connected the speaker via a 3.5mm jack cable.

I tried deleting the contents of the "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins" folder and Airplay works again!

 

[YourFavouriteSwede]

SRQrws, thanks for bringing this issue up. My experience is the same. For me, Airplay worked wonders with 11.2. Something happend along the line.

Cermja, I will try deleting the contents of that folder tomorrow. Good suggestion!

 

[SRQrws]

I tried deleting the contents of the "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins" folder and Airplay works again!

I was going to give this a try... My Plug-ins folder has three sub-folders, Components, Digidesign, and VST. Each of those folders is empty, so there's no content to delete. And the folders themselves cannot be moved to the trash. I have not been able to find any other possible solutions yet. And apparently its not a widespread issue since there have been so few responses to this thread. Oh well...

 

[ccmacrum]

I have this exact problem too, a full restart fixed the problem. It will be great if we can find the root cause.

 

[headlessmike]

I occasionally have a similar (or maybe the same) problem. I can always get it to work again by power-cycling either my Airplay receiver or computer. In my case the former is a Yamaha receiver with built-in Airplay. I suspect that either my computer or the receiver thinks that it's still connected to the other, and that restarting either one breaks that phantom connection allowing a new connection to be made. But I have no hard evidence.

 

[SRQrws]

I spent an hour on the phone last night with an Apple senior tech. I was able to reproduce the problem multiple times and he uploaded screenshots and the sys logs. He also indicated that they are aware of the problem. We have a follow up call set for June 23rd. Stay tuned...

 

[SRQrws]

I spent an hour on the phone last night with an Apple senior tech. I was able to reproduce the problem multiple times and he uploaded screenshots and the sys logs. He also indicated that they are aware of the problem. We have a follow up call set for June 23rd. Stay tuned...

In follow up, the tech did call me back, but did not have a solution. He said it's "in engineering," but didn't provide any next steps. I went as far as to download the public beta of Monterey, but that didn't fix the issue. I ended up going back to Big Sur since Microsoft Remote Desktop is broken in Monterey. Again, everything is fine when using Airplay from one of my iOS devices. It's just wonky with the m1 iMac. I will post again if anything changes.

 

[snakes-]

Sometimes i have airplay problems
(black screen on TV) with my mac to apple tv after some testing i found a solution before i use airplay i turn Bluetooth on then airplay works for me without problems.
Switch Bluetooth off and on saved me a restart.

 

[SRQrws]

Sometimes i have airplay problems with my mac to apple tv after some testing i found a solution before i use airplay i turn Bluetooth on then airplay works for me without problems.
Turning Bluetooth on and off saved me a restart.

My bluetooth is always on with the iMac....need it for the keyboard and trackpad.

 

[haralds]

I found that enabling "Sound Enhancer" disables HomePod AirPlay.
I don't want to tell you what all it took to find that out.
Time saving hint: create another user and try it from there to find out, whether it is a System or personal settings issue.

 

[YourFavouriteSwede]

Did a clean install of Big Sur 11.5.2 yesterday on my Mac mini M1. Still no luck. AirPlay just wanna play once! Putting the system to sleep and logging in to try again - no luck. A reboot helps but is far-fetched when the system otherwise seems healthy.

For the love of Steve Jobs - help!

 

[SRQrws]

Did a clean install of Big Sur 11.5.2 yesterday on my Mac mini M1. Still no luck. AirPlay just wanna play once! Putting the system to sleep and logging in to try again - no luck. A reboot helps but is far-fetched when the system otherwise seems healthy.

For the love of Steve Jobs - help!

Yep, same here. Very frustrating. I'm actually considering selling my M1 iMac and buying an Intel iMac. I know it's a waste of money, but stuff like this drives me nuts.

 

[RazorWriter]

Yep, same here. Very frustrating. I'm actually considering selling my M1 iMac and buying an Intel iMac. I know it's a waste of money, but stuff like this drives me nuts.

Don't count on that to fix the problem. I've got a 16" Intel MBP. Airplay doesn't work no matter what I do. I'm waiting for the M1 version to come out because the thermal throttling on this is terrible - If I plug into an external 4k monitor it becomes unusable unless I put ice packs under it.

Also I can't just delete "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins" either as it contains a a number of virtual instruments I use for music production. I could move them somewhere else temporarily to test this however.

 

[tdudai]

Same situation here: new M1 Mac Mini, new Homepod Minis, no sound over Airplay after sleep and wakeup.
I killed these processes in Activity Monitor and then reselected my Homepod in the sound menu:
-AirplayXPCHelper
-coreaudiod
and it works again. Try repeating it a few times until it works. I even put the Mac to sleep and Airplay keeps working. I closed the browser (tested sound by using Youtube) and tested again and it stopped working. Repeated my trick and it works again. It is painful and in no way a permanent solution, but it is better than a restart.
Update next morning: no Airplay after a nights sleep. Killed "AirplayXPCHelper" once, reselected my Homepod, works.

Apple, please fix this!

 

[EPO75]

This issue is still present in the Monterey beta, one of the reason I went for the beta hoping this was fixed. But after the Mini M1 goes to sleep it's over. There is a topic on the Apple forums https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252791695?answerId=255907506022#255907506022 .
Also made a report in the Feedback asisistant, but no luck or reply yet. Seems they are not putting effort into it..
For now no sleep mode for the Mini M1. Would be great if more people made reports of it in the feed ass app.

 

[SteeBee]

I've been dealing with this problem since day one (back in July) with my M1 iMac. With Big Sur, the force-quit AirPlayXPCHelper workaround would work very well, but that's so clunky, I simply set my iMac to never sleep.

Now that my iMac is Monterey and my HomePod is 15.1, thought I'd try again. Unbelievably, it's even worse than before. If I've been using AirPlay to stream Music.app to my HomePod, and the system sleeps, then wakes, and I try to resume playing Music… the AirPlay speakers error out, Music.app locks up (can't even be force quit), can't change system audio volume, can't open Sound preferences pane in System Preferences, many already-running apps stop responding, can't even Restart or ShutDown from the apple menu! The only recourse seems to be sudo shutdown -r now in Terminal or hold down the power button. All thanks to AirPlay, ugh. What a mess.

All this, yet not even the tiniest hiccup when doing the exact same thing hundreds of times over on my Intel MBP.

The problem is clearly M1 + AirPlay + sleep/wake.

I submitted via Feedback Assistant, and have been updating the case regularly (alas, no feedback from Apple on my feedback). Have also been keeping an eye on that Apple forums thread.

Back to sleeping the display but never the system, I guess.

 

[SRQrws]

I've been dealing with this problem since day one (back in July) with my M1 iMac. With Big Sur, the force-quit AirPlayXPCHelper workaround would work very well, but that's so clunky, I simply set my iMac to never sleep.

Now that my iMac is Monterey and my HomePod is 15.1, thought I'd try again. Unbelievably, it's even worse than before. If I've been using AirPlay to stream Music.app to my HomePod, and the system sleeps, then wakes, and I try to resume playing Music… the AirPlay speakers error out, Music.app locks up (can't even be force quit), can't change system audio volume, can't open Sound preferences pane in System Preferences, many already-running apps stop responding, can't even Restart or ShutDown from the apple menu! The only recourse seems to be sudo shutdown -r now in Terminal or hold down the power button. All thanks to AirPlay, ugh. What a mess.

I had the same issues as you with Big Sur, but thankfully (??!!!??) they have not gotten worse for me with Monterey. The lock-ups you describe are very concerning. I ended up putting Activity Monitor in my dock and I kill AirPlayXPCHelper whenever AirPlay doesn't work. Between not sleeping or rebooting all the time, that's the least annoying option for me. I escalated the problem to Apple Engineering a couple of months ago. They basically responded with 'yup, it's a problem,' but never went any further with it. Clearly there's an issue with AirPlayXPCHelper. I'm kind of shocked it's apparently so difficult to fix. Or maybe enough people haven't complained....

 

[YourFavouriteSwede]

11.6.4 seems to have resolved the issue for me. Any one else?

EDIT: Didn't work. 11.6.4 is the same as it ever was.

 

[bogdanw]

Quick way of restarting AirPlayXPCHelper from Terminal

sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/com.apple.AirPlayXPCHelper

 

[YourFavouriteSwede]

.. or by: sudo kill $(pgrep AirPlayXPCHelper) && sudo kill $(pgrep coreaudiod) && sudo kill $(pgrep AirPlayUIAgent)

 

[SteeBee]

11.6.4 seems to have resolved the issue for me. Any one else?

EDIT: Didn't work. 11.6.4 is the same as it ever was.

I'm up to 12.2.1, and it's still happening to me. AirPlay is lovely until my M1 sleeps, then it all goes to hell. This is despite what, a full OS update and a half-dozen point releases since it all started. I had a Feedback assistant issue open, and submitted a bunch of screenshots, extremely clear narrative, even a video of the problem, and they closed it on me.

Since my last post about Monterey seemingly making it even harder to get out of the issue without a restart, I've learned to kill coreaudiod process before touching anything when I get the exclamation point. Then I can proceed with the AirPlayXPCHelper workaround. coreaudiod likes to shoot up to near 100% CPU if I so much as touch anything audio-related when the exclamation point is showing.

 

[SteeBee]

Since updating M1 iMac to 12.6 and HomePod to 16.0, this seems to have finally resolved for me.

Hope everyone else is resolved too!

 

[Raist3001]

I know this is an old thread but I am having this exact issue on Ventura 13.0 M1 Max.
Airplay will not work after waking my Mac from sleep. I need to restart the music app in order to get airplay to work.

 

[SteeBee]

I know this is an old thread but I am having this exact issue on Ventura 13.0 M1 Max.
Airplay will not work after waking my Mac from sleep. I need to restart the music app in order to get airplay to work.

I know I previously said it was resolved for me, however, NGL, AirPlay can still be glitchy after sleep/wake, sometimes.

That said, when it does get glitchy, simply restarting Music app (as you're doing) seems to do the trick each time (I'm on 13.2 now). That's a lot simpler than it used to be, when system processes needed to be killed using Activity Monitor or Terminal via an executable script file (if you wanted to avoid the nuclear option, which was a full system restart). That was SO annoying.

I'm still holding out hope that AirPlay on my M1 iMac will eventually work as consistently as it always has on my Intel MBP. It's improved a lot, but not there yet.