Cannot control volume using Apple Music when I stream to my AirPlay devices on my iPhone and iPad

I finally found a solution until Apple makes this a proper setting: Airplay can be accessed via Shortcuts app. When you do this, your phone directly controls the volume. Just go into Shortcuts, create a new shortcut and search for “airplay” to find and use it. Siri seems to have issues with it, but at least it can be placed on your Home Screen.

I have found a potential solution. If you open your Apple TV, go to settings>Remotes and Devices>Volume Control. For some reason it got set to “Receiver via IR”. I changed it to auto and I was able to change the volume from my phone once again. Good luck! Hope that solves your problem!

I can isolate the problem to a hand-off situation to just one Apple TV for music playback. When I select music on my phone or iPad (same problem) and I select just a single Apple TV for playback, the music playback is handed over to the Apple TV and the volume bar is grey / has no slider. Volume is fixed. At this point I need to walk to the receiver connected to the Apple TV to adjust the volume. BUT: if I select my Apple HomePod FIRST, and then add the same Apple TV, I can simultaneously control the volume for both devices. I guess, I just have to always play on two or more devices at the same time. Sidenote: only the Apple music app can do handovers, so the problem does not occur when playing from another app, as that is just streaming from my phone, as I then control the phone music volume and to not need to remote control the Apple TV volume.

I’ve been having the same problem for some time, and remembering that is used to work. Playing music is fine but the volume control is grayed out.

For me, the solution was that my phone and the AppleTV were on different WiFi settings (my phone was using the WiFi 6 (5G) setting while the Apple TV could only connect to the standard WiFi connection). Switching my phone over to the exact same WiFi connection solved the problem.

I figured it out:

Go to Settings/General/Airplay & Handoff. Make sure everything is off. Volume control returns when you airplay through Apple TV with no problems.

THIS!!!

so I only use my Apple TV’s to stream music and don’t have them even hooked up to any sort of screen. I am using a Gen 4 Apple TV and followed these steps.

1. format Apple TV
2. set up with another Apple device on iCloud
3. rename the device to the appropriate room
4. sign out of iCloud
5. sign out of home sharing (not sure if this one matters)

I now have volume control back and can play to multiple rooms!

I hope this works for others

A temporary fix that has been working for me for months:

1) make sure the music that is playing on Apple Music is playing only through iPhone or iPad - which ever you’re using. So, make sure Airplay is turned off.

2) Close Apple Music Down on iPhone or iPad

3) restart Apple Music

4) turn airplay on

volume control should be available until you do one of the following:

a) turn airplay off and then attempt to restart airplay again without closing Apple Music down FIRST with airplay turned off

b) pausing music for a long period of time. For me, anything beyond 10 or 15 minutes and the volume control disappears

if you lose the volume control for any reason, make sure you turn airplay off, playing music only through iPhone first, then close Apple Music down, then relaunch and start again. If you close down Apple Music while Airplay is engaged, the volume control will not return when you relaunch Apple Music. The key is to make sure Airplay is off before you close down Apple Music.

Yes. But the volume issue presists...

I've found that if I select a seperate device first (in my case, an Apple TV that isn't connected to anything), then select the device I want to play (another Apple TV connected to my patio speakers), the volume control will work for the second device. I can't control volume on the first device, but I can on the second device.

Clearly, it's not behaving as it should, but this is a workaround.

If it is just a problem when using Apple Music or TV, delete and reinstall the app per the directions in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250916065?login=true

It just worked for me ... Good luck ...

I will tell what is working for me;

through control center, I push the round tv&speakers icon, Select the apple tv that I want and immediately after that start to scroll volume back and forth until it activates streaming to apple tv.

this is a bug, but that looks to me the only way to do so. If someone replies can make a video.

It works now :). The trick was to not play any music before Airplaying to Apple TV. Thanks!

The only fix I have found involves an old AppleTV that only has Airplay 1. If I begin streaming to that, and then switch to the ATV the I want (with Airplay2), then it will use Airplay 1 and stream like normal with volume controls and everything.

I brought this issue up with Apple ages ago. The only solution I’ve found is to sign out of iCloud / remove my account from Users and Accounts which is pretty frustrating, because it then limits what I can use the Apple TV for, like HomeKit, but hey, at least I can control the volume with my phone again.

I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t just make this an option in Settings.

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me at all. Signing out of iCloud on the Apple TV seems to be the only solution, and even then, you have to be careful. I've noticed the best thing to do is to only initiate Airplay when you're on the Apple TV home screen, because if you're in say Netflix for example, it will intermittently go back to the volume-less Airplay, and the music won't even play, so you have to restart your phone. I would also suggest turning Airplay off before going into Netflix. But sometimes it's fine if you aren't careful about where you initiate Airplay. Another issue which happens when you're signed out is that it'll prompt you incessantly to sign in with your Apple ID. What a buggy mess.

Delete the old school Apple TV app, do aforementioned steps and rely purely on the iOS control center tv remote.

Power down all devices for 90 seconds and try again.

SO has exact same iPhone as myself and this is the only difference I could come across, removed the remote app and seems to be working without issue.

glhf