How to refresh list of Airplay devices on the network?

Question

Level 1

10 points

How to refresh list of Airplay devices on the network?

I'm using a MBA running Mountain Lion. I work on two different networks throughout the day—at my office (where there are 8 Airplay devices, Apple TVs attached to flat panel displays) and at home (two Airplay devices).

The problem I'm running into is that when I arrive at home and want to connect Airplay to a device on my home network, the list of available devices doesn't update from those on my office network, which I'm no longer connected to. There doesn't seem to be any way I've found to refresh the list without having to do a full restart—which just seems wrong.

Is there a way to refresh the list of Airplay devices that show as options in the "AirPlay Mirroring" menu within Displays settings?

Posted on Aug 1, 2013 8:18 PM

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Answer 1

sberman

Level 10

263,847 points

Aug 1, 2013 10:11 PM in response to mikebrittain

Have you run AirPort Utility on your Mac? It's in the Applications > Utilities folder.

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Answer 2

ZANGIN

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2013 2:01 PM in response to sberman

I have the same problem... ..

If my apple TV is turned off, and I wake up my MacBook Pro, obviously it's not going to detect my Apple TV.

So, lets say I decide I want to use Airplay. I go turn on my Apple TV, wait a few minutes.. I would hope that the Airplay Icon would just appear across the top of my screen, but it doesn't.

I tried running the airport utility, no luck.

I also have to restart my laptop for it to discover my Apple TV, if my apple TV isn't turned on when I start up my computer.

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Answer 3

Nov 29, 2013 4:00 PM in response to mikebrittain

I have the same problem. Bump.

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Answer 4

etpinge

Level 1

9 points

Jan 31, 2014 8:24 AM in response to mikebrittain

mikebrittain:

out of curiousity, do you have a virtual machine such as VMFusion or Parallels running as well?

I have the same issue, but only when I have VMFusion running. Since upgrading to Mavericks, it appears to have gone away.

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Answer 5

angrest

Level 1

15 points

Mar 16, 2014 3:36 AM in response to mikebrittain

Add me to the list. I have replaced an Airport Express box, the old one is still shown on all devices as available target. I really would like to get rid of the old entry.

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Answer 6

angrest

Level 1

15 points

Mar 16, 2014 4:14 AM in response to angrest

... ok, again: user error. I missed the fact that the speaker name may differ from the airport express name. Thus, I saw another box on the network. Should know my inventory better :(

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Answer 7

mikebrittain Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 16, 2014 7:41 AM in response to mikebrittain

The solution I eventually landed on is to kill off coreaudio. When it restarts (automatically), the current airplay targets are rediscovered and the old ones are forgotten.

Here is the command I use:

sudo pkill coreaudiod

I made this an alias in .bash_profile so I could access it quickly. It's surprisingly frequent that I find myself using this:

alias airplayreset="sudo pkill coreaudiod"

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Answer 8

Mar 22, 2014 1:46 PM in response to mikebrittain

TY!

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Answer 9

Aug 14, 2015 10:00 PM in response to mikebrittain

I am running Yosemite 10.10.4 and this issue is still there. I have AppleTVs at work and at home, and when moving between networks, I will frequently see devices from the other network in my list of Airplay devices. Sometimes I see only devices form the other network and not any local devices. Killing coreaudiod seems to fix this. This problem has been around for at least two years. Fortunately, Apple is working on a self-driving car.

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