Turning airplay off

The Apple TV icon and also the WiFi icon (try it also!) in the menu bar when clicked on show briefly "looking for ..." or "scanning for ..." That is because the MacOS assumes that if someone clicks on the icon it should check for available devices to connect to, but it is very brief and uses essentially no system resources. This behavior is built in to the MacOS and there is no option to turn it off. But it has essentially zero effect and is not something to be concerned about. If even this infinitesimal use of computer resources bothers you, simply don't click on those icons, then the "looking for ..." or "scanning for ..." will never happen.

macfrombrampton wrote:

Strangely when I reinstalled Catalina the airplay symbol no longer appears on the top. This suggest inconositency in the operating system and the fact no one noticed and reported this issue is surprising.

Not true. You can make the Airplay symbol reappear by checking the box in Display Preferences for "Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available." Since you don't seem to like seeing it, maybe best if you leave that box unchecked.

Apple has instructions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

But there is no need for you to install the MacOS (again).

I suggest you simply set Airplay to off in Display Preferences and also uncheck the box to "show mirroring options in the menu bar when available." This will stop the "looking for TV ..." indicator that was bothering you.

macfrombrampton wrote:

My concern is still why airplay activated on a clean O.S. install on the top menu and I could not turn it off and why after an another O.S. install it no longer appeared.

To turn airplay off and remove the icon from the top menu, simply uncheck the box in the Display Preferences (mine is shown checked below, you will want to uncheck yours), and also select the option for AirPlay Display: OFF.

There are no other options in Catalina. If you don't like your options, send a suggestion to Apple Feedback.

Is this causing some problem in the way your Mac is working? Not sure what the problem is.

By checking or unchecking the box for "Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available" you can get the option for activating Airplay to show or not show in the menu bar on the Mac. If you tried installing the MacOS multiple times and multiple ways, it is not surprising that you ended up with slightly different default options but you can change that behavior to what you want by checking or unchecking that box. Feel free to provide Apple feedback through the Apple feedback page if you don't like the way the MacOS handles this.

Since you indicated earlier you don't use Airplay, maybe you should uncheck that box so that option does not take up space on your menu bar. Is your Mac doing something that you don't want it to do?

There are at least four different ways, maybe more, to install MacOS. From Recovery, simple install (no erase). From Recovery, erase and install. From Internet Recovery, which may install a different version than Recovery. And from an external boot/install drive, which also has several options and can install various versions.

There is no need to reinstall the MacOS to turn airplay off! You can do that in about one second by simply checking or unchecking a box in the Display Preferences, or by telling it to stop using Airplay in the menu bar Display Preference.

Howdy macfrombrampton,

It sounds like you want to know if you can disable AirPlay on your Mac. We know how important this is for you, and you’re in the right place for answers.

There isn't any way to completely disable AirPlay on your Mac. We understand your concern and know how important this is to you. You can leave feedback about this on our Product Feedback page.

Cheers!

macfrombrampton wrote:

the difference between the wifi andrplay is wifi I am using and when I click on wifi it is scanning for potential wifi SSID's. Airplay I have no devices capable of using that service and I have turned it off so I don't expect it to scan. But even though it is turned off it uses some of my CPU time 4minutes durin a day of usage. This is not acceptable for a service I don't use.

It is only scanning because you click on it. If you stop clicking, it won't scan.

By the way, for 4 minutes per day, you must be doing a lot of clicking on the Airplay icon! Each time you click, it scans for a few seconds. If you don't click, it doesn't scan. So just don't click there anymore if you don't use it. Mine has used only 1.8 minutes over 5 days since the last boot, which is 0.025%, hardly worth discussing here.

As P. Phillips pointed out, you could switch to Windows, but I'm going to guess that there are a lot of background processes there that you can't turn off using more than 0.025% of the cpu.

I think there will be no more Catalina updates, except for security updates maybe.

You can provide feedback to Apple about this:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

They might consider it for Big Sur or a future version of the MacOS. However I doubt they will do it for such a small impact thing unless Apple sees it as something worth their expenditure of additional resources (time, money).

Since you don't use Airplay, you may not realize that it can be activated, connected, disconnected and turned off all from the menu icon. This is only possible if it scans and presents the user with devices to connect to through Airplay when the user clicks the menu icon. If it refused to scan, as you want, then the user would need to first go to Display Preferences, uncheck a box, then connect separately, many more steps and clicks. Many people use Airplay (I do), they probably appreciate the convenience of the menu icon click (I do).

For the people that don't use Airplay, I think that 0.025% penalty is probably acceptable. That's just two ten-thousandths of your Mac resources being utilized.

Why are we being told what Apple Should do and Not Directly to Apple The OS belongs to Apple and only they, if they decide to , listen at all.

Re-writing the whole AirPay Functionality for each macOS because the scanning uses 0.25 % of the CPU resources is what it is. Live with or Live without it