TV-OS-26 broke Airplay on my Gen 4 AppleTV.

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Level 1

115 points

TV-OS-26 broke Airplay on my Gen 4 AppleTV.

After years of happy watching on my telly my Apple TV Updated last night. Now I can't Airplay anymore. I can still mirror my screen, watch library stuff, but no Airplay anymore. The function I bought that thing for doesn't work anymore. Great. Internal Server Error or some such is what Airflow gives me.

Everything on the same router through LAN connections, nothing changed except for the TV OS update. Now what? I take it there's no way to 'downgrade' to what I had? Which worked great.

Most frustrating in my view is that there's no way for me to let Apple Tech know about the problem. What a mess. Besides all that I think '26' looks way beyond ugly.

Apple TV 4K, tvOS 26

Posted on Sep 16, 2025 01:22 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Vancouver22

Level 8

37,202 points

Sep 16, 2025 04:59 PM in response to Hermie

The unmentioned device you are AirPlaying from may need a software update and restarting first.

See: If screen mirroring or streaming isn't working on your AirPlay-compatible device for troubleshooting steps you can take.

Btw You can always submit feedback to Apple to alert them to anything you feel is a bug: Feedback - Apple TV - Apple

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Answer 2

Sep 16, 2025 02:27 PM in response to Hermie

I just checked and I was able to AirPlay from YouTube

I was able to airplay from my photos app.

I was NOT able to airplay from the files app, that’s something that I thought I used to be able to do.

Usually, I can AirPlay from other streaming apps like Amazon, MGM or Paramount+

But you can do screen mirroring from a device?

dang, it duped my post

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Answer 3

Sep 16, 2025 02:26 PM in response to Hermie

I just checked and I was able to AirPlay from YouTube

I was able to airplay from my photos app.

I was NOT able to airplay from the files app, that’s something that I thought I used to be able to do.

Usually, I can AirPlay from other streaming apps like Amazon, MGM or Paramount+

But you can do screen mirroring from a device?

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Answer 4

Hermie Author

Level 1

115 points

Sep 16, 2025 05:31 PM in response to Vancouver22

The unmentioned device is a late 2015 iMac which can't be updated anymore because Monterey is the end of the line for it. It has Airplayed through many a version of TV OS without any problem.

It worked, I was watching. Why not check for updates? Update available. Half an hour later, done. I stopped watching because Airplay failed. Stop always trying to shift the problem onto something else, please. TV OS 26 is the culprit here.

I can only hope yet another '26' update solves it, but knowing Apple after 30 years I'm not holding my breath. Thank you.

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Answer 5

Sep 16, 2025 05:41 PM in response to Hermie

If this is an app version of the Apple TV+ app, is it possible to restore the previous version? Or do you have a time machine backup that has the older version? I used to have a Time Machine connected to a Mac Pro and I was able to restore older apps that had been backed up from another machine that had something even older than Monterey…

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Answer 6

Vancouver22

Level 8

37,202 points

Sep 16, 2025 10:54 PM in response to Hermie

Not trying to shift blame. Yes we can agree that tvOS 26 being installed has caused this. This could be due to it no longer being compatible with the macOS version you’re running on the Mac. You most likely do not having a working Home App on your Mac. HomeKit & AirPlay are interconnected. You may have at some point unknowingly upgraded to the newer Home architecture (unrelated to devices software updates) and once this has been done, any device not using newer compatible versions of OS will cease to work with AirPlay.

Do you have another Apple device signed into the same iCloud running newer software that can be used instead to AirPlay with? An iPhone or iPad would need to be running at least OS 16.2 (if you ever did this architecture upgrade)

You can try screen mirroring instead as well.

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