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

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!

Hi

Is there an update to this case? I’ve been having this ‘handoff instead of stream’ issue for the last few months and so pleased to have finally found a thread about it!

I have raised the issue with Apple support a number of times. Only once did they take a real interest and get a senior person involved, but this eventually went round in circles without a resolution.

Glad to have found this thread. I use a combination of AppleTV 4Ks and Airport Expresses. My current workaround is to airplay to both an Airport and an AppleTV. The content is streamed instead of handed off. Again, a temp fix. Will attempt the volume control fix suggested by SkylarMills. While we're on the subject , I seem to have to select a device 2 or three times before a connection is established. On an Airport or AppleTV 4K, or combination of both. Anyone else experience this behavior?

Same here: iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 13.5, Apple TV 4K.

Interesting enough, when Mirroring the iPhone the volume control works just fine !

Apple, please fix the volume control issues when using AirPlay and the unwanted Hand-Off !

Best regards, Ansgar S-J

Same problem, but with some details that might help engineers figure it out. I use AppleTV (4th gen) paired to an amp for outdoor speakers. From my wife's iPhone, works perfectly. From any other device (my iPhone, her Macbook Air, etc.) the volume adjustment is not allowed. The music comes on at an annoyingly loud volume and all we can do is start, stop, ff, select other playlists, etc. The volume slider in the Music app is grayed out, as is the volume slider on the AirPlay selection sheet on my iPhone. As others noted, this was not the case when I set it up. Of course, we've tried resetting the AppleTV and the devices.

While an AppleTV 4th gen paired to an amp is about 50% less than getting a Sonos Amp... in hindsight, I wish I just got the Sonos amp. I'm guessing "it just works". Unsure of Apple's plans here ever since they discontinued the Express.

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.

Don't hold your breath. I've been reporting this exact problem for a year now. Forcing the use of Bluetooth rather than wifi is an acceptable fix for the moment, but being able to use wifi to adjust volume from a different room, or out in the yard, is the preferred capability.

I've seen this as well. Trying unsuccessfully to use the volume control on my iPhone then, suddenly the volume control is no longer greyed out and works. I have an "a ha!" moment, then the controls grays out again. The whole time I'm 15 feet from my Apple TV.

My fix:

Go to Settings > Remote-App and Devices

Unpair the problematic iDevice.

Afterwords connecting to the Apple TV at first will take a while but volume control will be back.

They most likely updated the code base without making sure that the stored properties for paired devices are in sync with the new code base.

hth

Omg. This worked!!! I have been so frustrated by this problem for a long time (thank you Apple) I actually went and spent $800 on a sonos amp because of it and had plans to switch out my other Apple TV’s with this issue. I have 3 Apple TV’s just dedicated to audio streaming. I found Sonos was very unreliable for some reason with airplay 2 and so I returned it. I am so happy this solution fixed my Apple TV audio volume control! I love being able to control volume from my hot tub with my Apple Watch. Thank you Tobia!!

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.

This is so frustrating. I've found one workaround that works "most" of the time. I have several AppleTV 4K devices in my home, but I mostly like to stream music to the one connected to some speakers on my patio.

Since this issue started happening earlier this year, I've found that if I stream to a different AppleTV 4K first, then select my "Patio" Apple TV4K, then I can control the volume. This doesn't work 100% of the time, but does work most of the time.

This is extremely irritating though, and I'm giving up on Apple fixing it. I'm ordering a Sonos Port in hopes of solving this problem once and for all.

Apple - please fix this before you lose more users!

Unfortunately, when I sign out of iCloud on the AppleTV, it won't play songs from my Apple Music subscription. This whole thing seems so buggy. I'm getting all kinds of bizarre behavior.

Still troubleshooting!

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.

I tried your steps, including logging out of iCloud, which prevents playing songs that are not in my Library. I logged back into iCloud, and started having the volume issue again on my iPhone 8 (13.5.1).

My iPad Mini 4 (13.5.1), seems to work perfectly.

I'll try the steps again, and test with the iPhone.