Airplay icon is not showing up

I had a similar problem but discovered the Airplay icon only shows when the Airplay enabled device/speaker is discoverable. This could account for why the icon seems inconsistent.

I rebooted my speaker, started up iTunes again and the Airplay icon was back.

Last night I played music from my iPhone over airplay through my home theatre system. Turned on the airplay and the music app on the phone. Airplay icon was visible - clicked it and music began to play. Easy. Two hours later a different story. Tried to play YouTube videos from iPad and icon would not come up. Toggling the Airplay setting on the ATV has always worked - till last night. Had to pull the plug on the ATV and reboot the iPad then icon came up. This is getting more and more frustrating. Apple techs have no idea. One of them told me that i could not plug the ATV into an ethernet connection as then I would no longer be able to use airplay over the wifi network. That makes no sense at all as everything goes through the router anyway??!! Its just a hardwired connection between the router and the ATV.

I had the same problem. I restarted my phone. No luck. I restored my Apple TV to its original configuration and enabled home sharing. No luck.

Here's what fixed it:

CYCLE THE POWER TO YOUR ROUTER.

Yup. That's how I resolved the issue too. I replaced my router altogether with an Airport Express. There is something in the non-Apple routers that you have to "open" in order to allow the AppleTV to communicate. Being an Apple guy I have no idea what ports have to be open so it was easier to simply replace it. It now works flawlessly. Icon is always there; no dropped signals; perfect. So, unless you can figure out which ports have to be opened in a regular router I suggest switching to Apple. It stands to reason I guess. All of Apple's children play well togeter :-)

Hey guys, I was with the same problem. After making all suggestions, none of them resolved my problem. So, after hours and hours reading articles I solved the problem in my machine. I desinstalled the Bonjour Software and reinstalled again. Perfect!!! The airplay icon appeared back!! All times, it was there!!! I hope can help you... Hugs

This did the trick for me! I unstalled the Bonjour service, downloaded it freshly from Apples support site - and reinstalled it. Now I have a) the Airplay icon on my PC and b) can use homesharing again.

Just wondering, why the "Bonjour printer service for Windows" also enables the ability of home sharing, but who cares as long as it's working.

Thanks for the hint! Bye!

I fixed my problem by re-enabling airplay on my Apple TV settings. For some reason it was turned off. Now it is working. I hope this simple solution works for you.

This sounds similar to a problem I was having with the airplay icon disappearing randomly from TuneIn and iTunes on my iPhone. I would connect and the music would stream to my speaker connected to Airport Express fine. If I changed to a different app or another station the icon to connect to the speaker would disappear or not work. I traced the problem to, what I assume was, interference. I loaded Istumbler on my mac and it showed I was on the same WiFi channel as my neighbour's wifi router. I manually selected a channel that wasn't used by logging into the router directly. After that I had no problems at all.

Worth a try...

Nando's solution worked for me. I'd installed a bigger hard drive and even though I'd cloned the drive, some of settings were off. Turning off sharing on my Apple TV and then turning it back on solved the problem.

What did you find out? I am suffering from the same phenomena

I was just noticing this problem a few minutes ago. I was a bit freaked because there was no way I was buying a new apple router for this. I found this link and followed the instructions and about a minute later I was up and running with the airplay button back in sight. I just shut down my ipad and unplugged the Apple TV long enough to change my clothes and turned both back on at the same time. Hope this helps. http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Troubleshooting/a/How-To-Fix-Airplay-Icon-Missing. htm

I have the same issue y tried several things as you comment here, i´ve tri to serch in different foruns and nothing, yesterday my airplay disappered from my apple tv as well, BUT the difference is when i connect to wifi works it doesnt work just when connected to Ethernet cable..

My issue is the iphone and ipad through airplay can see and utilize the airport express. However, from Itunes on my PC, the option to utilize airplay through airport express has disappeared and can't figure out how to get it back.

I have Denon AVR-1913 Receiver and I could not use Airplay from itunes after upgrading itunes. I finally found About.com fix http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Troubleshooting/a/How-To-Fix-Airplay-Icon-Missing. htm, I unplugged the receiver, replugged it in and then reset the Ipad, and the Airplay Icon re-appeared in itunes on my PC. However the airplay icon still doesn't appear on my Ipad, I realize computers are complicated devices, but this is extremely annoying, if your going to update itunes or OS make sure the features you had before still work you freakin $#@! holes.