Where do I enable the Airplay Mirroring icon in the top menubar?

thank you, your post helped me a lot.

Right I have a macbook pro with OS X Lion 10.7.5, I have tired all the above fixes to sort out mirroring with my brand new apple tv. Via itunes it gives me the sync icon but in display settings i just get show displays icon in the bar no mirroring option can any one help im pretty sure my mac book pro is 2011 or earlier can someone please help ?? What am i doing wrong ?? used to compatibility problems with none apple products disappointed with this though hope apple sort it !!

Cheers Adam

More or less the same issue here. MacBook Pro (early 2011), OS X 10.8.4. I'm able to see the AirPlay button in iTunes and play to the external device, but I don't see the AirPlay button in the toolbar and the AirPlay Mirrorring (in System Preferences, Display) shows No Devices Detected. Hope someone can help. Thx.

I'm no Mac book geek but here's what ive noticed about this issue. The fix about going to settings and switching to mirroring only works if your mac has aready identified another device ie apple tv. if not then the option doesn't even appear. I noticed this whilst attempting to get the thunderbolt connection to my tv working. Although i havent figured out why airplay isnt available on my brand new macbook pro although it is on the Gen2 apple tv, one work round is a simple program called Airflick. http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/ this picked up my apple tv straight away.

Cool, it works for me

Thanks.

I was very frustrated because none of these responses seemed to solve my problem. I have a macbook pro from mid 2011 and was running mountain lion. I simply could not get the airplay icon in the menu bar. Airplay was available in itunes, but there was no option to show airplay mirroring options in the menu bar when available in system preferences > diplay. I know it should have been there with mountain lion, but I decided to install mavericks to see if that would fix the problem. That worked. Once I had mavericks running the airplay extra was visible on menu bar.

On mac book, this is a very good first step you've suggested. If the drop down says "no devices detected" then check to make sure the TV/display/Smart TV is on the same wireless network as the mac (worked for me).

Thank you! That worked! I used to reboot the Apple TV 3th generation before reading your post!

Thank you. It worked. The Apple site did not help at all.