Airplay Icon Disappears on iPhone

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Airplay Icon Disappears on iPhone

Step one: I updated my Apple TV software to the new update.

Step two: I updated my wife's iPhone 4 to the new software.

Step three: I updated my iPhone 4 to the new software.

Step four: I played with the new features, streamed a few songs and pictures to the Apple TV. Spent a few minutes lamenting the absence of streaming homemade videos...

Step five: Showed wife the features on HER phone. She navigated to a photo in her photos, pressed the Airplay icon.... Nothing happens. After a couple moments of nothing happening, we switch to a song...no icon. I pick up my phone to show her how mine works...no icon.

Any guesses? I have restarted the phones multiple times. Still not working.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 23, 2010 9:34 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

newagemac

Level 2

255 points

Nov 29, 2010 5:56 PM in response to stlphk

If your iPhone ever drops the icon, just go into the multitasking bar and hold down on the app's icon until it wiggles. Then touch the minus sign to completely close the app. When you open it again, the Airplay icon comes back in my experience. Basically if some type of connection problem or something causes you to lose the icon, it will come back on its own but it can take a while. Closing the app completely and opening it back up forces it to check for Airplay compatibility. That fix has never failed to work for me.

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Answer 2

bigjsko

Level 1

14 points

Jul 9, 2011 1:36 AM in response to MiFiGuy

Hi

I think I'm probably restating what everybody is saying, but I thought I'll add my 2 cents' worth and hope that somebody from Apple is "listening". I've struggled with this problem for a couple of months now.

My setup is:

- ATV2 connected via ethernet

- iTunes on Windows 7 connected via ethernet

- iPhone connected via wireless

I first started with both my iPhone and ATV2 connected via wireless, but since it seems to be a wireless issue, I decided to eliminate one of the elements to find the problem, so I connected the ATV2 to the ethernet - and the problem still persists.

My airply still gets lost almost each time I wake my iphone up when it's not already in use. I've had some, but limited success, in switching the wireless on the iphone on or off, or even the phone itself. I've played with many wireless access point settings (The wireless channel, 802.11g or n or mixed, channel width, transmission rate) and nothing really makes a difference. There is no problem in my iTunes finding the ATV2 on the wired network and even seemed OK when the ATV2 was on wireless. I think the problem is from the iPhone's side.

The only consistent way to have the iPhone find the Airplay device is to reboot the wireless access point, which is why I think most people who play with the router settings find that it works after - I assume most routers restart after saving new settings. It seems like the iPhone only does a proper "rescan" of the network connections to find airplay devices once the router reboots. I think this is a definite bug in the current iOS design and hope apple addresses is pretty quickly.

It's annoying the **** out of me and having to reboot my wireless each time I want to use airplay is pretty much defeating the purpose of the airplay concept to me.

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Answer 3

mjruss

Level 1

45 points

Dec 19, 2010 5:43 PM in response to les.newsom

I just discovered something: No matter how I restart, quit and reopen iPod, etc, etc, once Airplay is lost it is lost.

Unless I turn off WiFi in Preferences and then turn it back on.

Could this be a wireless networking problem?

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Answer 4

kirk0820

Level 1

0 points

Mar 20, 2011 11:50 PM in response to les.newsom

I was having similar issue where, intermittently, the Airplay icon would disappear from two iPhones (4 and 3GS) and two iPads, and I could not get it back short of re-starting my router (Cisco Valet Plus M20). It happened on two occasions that I noticed and persisted until router restart.

Today, after poking around this thread and trying a number of the suggestions with no luck, I went into the settings on the *_Cisco router and opened up the wireless settings tab, then clicked on the "basic wireless settings" sub-tab, and set something called the "channel width" to "Auto: 20 or 40 MHz". (It was previously set to 20MHz only.)_*

I seemed to immediately get the Airplay icon back on the iPad after restarting the application.

Don't know if it will hold or if it's relevant in a larger context. Heck, don't even know what channel width is. The help screen on the router seems to say this is connected with Wireless B, G, N networking. For what it's worth.

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Answer 5

MiFiGuy

Level 1

8 points

Apr 14, 2011 1:56 AM in response to rgny

I hope I have the answer for this for you all. It bugged me too, for weeks. After checking all settings (all iOs devices on same network, all latest software) I decided to reboot my router. That did it... lol.

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Answer 6

Feb 24, 2012 11:27 AM in response to les.newsom

I'm using HomeShare and Icons on iPhone, iPad and PC all at once occasionally disappear .. argh. I've tried turning everything off and on, and even flushed the toilet a couple of times. I found the simple solution of turning off wifi on iPhone, then turning it back on seems to work, and miraculously all icons on all devices reappeared.

Now if I could only get audio from occasionally dropping when running my PC via wireless, but I'm convinced there's no solution to that one and resigned to hardwiring via LAN cable which solves that one.

Shiawase Kiki Ongaku

Dan

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Answer 7

Nov 23, 2010 11:37 PM in response to les.newsom

The 1st thing i would suggest is to ensure that you are actually on the same network, (being wifi) and not just on 3G

Try that 1st... 😉

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Answer 8

Nov 29, 2010 5:44 PM in response to les.newsom

I have the same problem. Rebooting the iPhone 3Gs and the airport express did not fix the problem. I hooked the phone up to iTunes and the icon magically appeared. I think that there must be some problem with the new operating system.

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Answer 9

ccuela

Level 1

0 points

Dec 1, 2010 6:05 AM in response to newagemac

I would like to share my experience in using Airplay as follows:

1. Airplay icon is found in the Photo app but not in the iPod app.
2. Close the iPod app in the multitask bar: does not solve the problem.
3. Switch off, then switch on the WIFI in iPhone 4: does not solve the problem.
4. Power off, then power on the iPhone 4: Airplay icon is shown on both the Photo and the iPod app.

Hope it helps.

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Answer 10

dbyone

Level 1

5 points

Dec 5, 2010 9:24 AM in response to dbyone

Update:
It goes away when the iPhone goes to sleep with nothing streaming to the apple tv.

Then when you wake the phone after some time and start playing music in the ipod app it eventually reappears without
Doing anything. I didn't pay attention to how long it took to reappear but it def did numerous times. It's just not instantaneous.

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Answer 11

Dec 23, 2010 5:39 PM in response to les.newsom

This happens to me on the iPad as well...usually it just a quick jump over the the "Airplay" menu on the ATV and turning it off then on again...I actually can watch my Airplay button regain functionality when I do it.

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Answer 12

kescaR

Level 1

0 points

Jan 28, 2011 3:43 PM in response to les.newsom

I've just found a solution, which works for me on iPhone4 ios 4.2.1
Well, all you have to do is to set your language in settings.app to another and then back...
airplay icon appears again and works like a charm 🙂 Maybe it's easyer than a reboot.

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Answer 13

rgny

Level 1

0 points

Apr 1, 2011 9:20 PM in response to kirk0820

Samething happens to me as well. Turning Airplay off and back on, on the ATV still won't get AirPlay back on the my iphone 3gs. I have to unplug the ATV to get the Airplay icon back on my phone. Also I noticed the movie will just stop, when I Airplay the movie to the ATV.

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Answer 14

Jan 18, 2013 12:57 PM in response to gregaus

I don't know why but this works:

On your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, navigate to Settings > General > International > Language and change to a different language (e.g. if you are using English, switch to French). The device will go through a language switch/reset process, and your AirPlay icon should be restored. Once your airplay is restored, go through the same procedure and reset back to English.

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Answer 15

Nov 24, 2010 8:55 AM in response to les.newsom

I've had some success with turning AirPlay OFF in the Apple TV settings and then ON again.

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