Q: Could not connect to Apple TV (2015) on Yosemite (10.10.5) Macbook Pro (Early 2015)

As I reported on Saturday, I too lost the ability to connect to the ATV. After seeing the positive results to deleting the plist file I thought I would give it a try this morning, but first I thought I would confirm if there was still a problem connecting to the ATV. Lo and behold I had no problem.

I was reading reports this weekend of a silent security update that had caused problems deleting drivers for the Ethernet cards on some iMacs. The update was "Incompatible Kernel Extension Configuration Data: Version 3.28.1" which installed itself on my Mac Mini on Friday afternoon. Version 3.28.2 of that update installed itself when I powered up the Mac this morning and I suspect it has resolved the problem with the connection to the ATV, in addition to no longer affecting Ethernet cards.

This is frustrating. I've already spent a couple of hours trying to fix this. I got all the symptoms described by the OP. I've tried everything that was suggested by the succeeding posts including cycling all my devices including the ATV2, ATV4, router, iPad, iPhone and 2 Macbooks.  I also deleted the .plist file and this didn't do anything.  I also downloaded all the latest updates (which was automatic anyway).

The problem actually only occurs on one of the Macbook not being able to AirPlay screencast to the ATV4. This same Macbook can AirPlay screencast to the ATV2. This same Macbook can AirPlay from iTunes to the ATV4 but not do the AirPlay screencast (as described by another commenter). Another Macbook and all my other iDevices (iPhone and iPad) works fine in screencasting to either ATV. So this isolates the problem to one particular Macbook that I have.

Complicating the problem (or maybe simplifying it) is the fact that another User account (which is the Admin account) for this problematic Macbook is able to do the AirPlay screencast. So you may say that the problem is solved since I just have to use this User account but I really don't want to do that. I have a regular User account which my whole family uses and this has been working fine ever since the ATV4 came to market about 6 months ago. Now, all of a sudden this stopped working earlier this week. It may have stopped working much earlier than that but I only noticed it this week.

Thank you! I just turn off firewall and everything works fine.

I tried everything mentioned in this thread to no avail.

Eventually I updated the Airport Utility firmware and everything started working again as normal.

Give it a try

Well, the lack of response by Apple to this thread is very disappointing. I found the thread b/c I can't Airplay from MacBook 2015 desktop, but can Airplay from iTunes on the same computer. Deleting plist of network settings didn't work. Turning off Firewall on MacBook didn't work either.

Interesting, Airplay works fine from the desktop of my old MacBook Air 6,1 (Core i5 1.3GHz & HD Graphics 5000), and my iMac Retina (Core i7 4Ghz & M295X).

All computers are running the same, latest version of OS X El Capitan 10.11.5.

I guess I will have to rebuild the MacBook 2015 from scratch and see if that fixes it. If it does, I will post for you guys.

COME ON APPLE! Fix the coding mess you are making in your ecosystem!

FYI this is a USER community. Apple is not here. We are all users like yourself. If you want Apple to hear you you need to contact Apple rather than expecting a response from them in a user community...

FYI...I did a clean reinstall on the 2015 MacBook and it will connect to the Apple TV now.

Hope this helps someone.

So, no coding mess to fix them.

How does one update the Airport Utility firmware?

https://www.apple.com/support/airport/downloads/

G'day all,

I'm hoping I may be able to help a lot of you with this issue. I work at a school with a fleet of about 70 AppleTV 3 and now one AppleTV 4. We tested and checked and then installed the ATV4 and all seemed fine for a day or so until we received a report of a teach that could simply not connect to it. Some students in the class were fine, but others had the same issue.

All my iOS devices were fine as was my MBAir.. Like all of you I hit the forums and tried various resets/tweeks/expletives .. nothing worked. I did discover that issue was limited to just YOSEMITE (10.10) macs. Any Mac updated to El CAPITAIN (10.11) was perfectly fine.

Then we stumbled upon a fix. Turn OFF the PASSCODE required option on ATV4 and after a short delay all 10.10 Macs can connect through! It gets weirder. If you then re-enable passcode then any 10.10 Mac that connected while it was off can now connect normally even using passcode. However. If the Mac has multiple accounts this fix has to be applied to every account in turn on the Mac. Otherwise it'll work for one user and not the next on the same Mac!

So for me it was an issue with my user account. While annoying all I had to do was delete the user account completely (including home folder) and start a new user account with exactly the same everything. Remember to backup your home folder (for example I put everything into the shared user folder). If you only have one user its a bit more annoying. Create a second Admin User, then delete your regular Admin User, then recreate that Admin User and finally delete the second Admin User.

Hope this helps someone.

Thanks,

spent hours trying to fix this