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

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.

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

Over here in germany we encountered a similar but different issue:

I'm an admin of quite a large school. We have around 1000 wireless clients (every student 7th grade and up and every teacher has an iPad plus several iPad class boxes with 25-30 devices each, smartphones and laptops, etc.) online at peak times and over 100 86" digital Boards in classrooms and several AppleTV's in office rooms. Teachers and staff use the Screen Snyc to connect to the boards and it all worked pretty well.

Suddenly, when Apple dropped their 18.7 and 26 iOS Updates on a wednesday Airplay went full bollocks. As soon as enough traffic hit the net, Airtime went up like crazy (over 75% on the network controller) and the boards weren't visible anymore in Screen Sync. Sporadically some of them were, but different ones each time you searched. Teachers couldn't connect to anything basically. In the breaks or later on a day all boards showed up again as if nothing happened.

There were no updates on network devices or the controller, there were no updates on the boards...just the iOS devices got them.

We tried every trick in our sleeve, we cut contact to Apple Update servers in our Firewall to reduce traffic, we tidied up our network, we tried several settings on our network controller for days, we even switched some network devices out because we thought maybe one was faulty/broken...until we found a solution:

Since mDNS and IGMP Snooping were active we added a "Querier Switch" and activated "Multicast and Boradcast Control" which prohibits devices from constantly casting their annoying and unwanted signals to everyone. Both settings weren't needed before. Then we put all important devices like the boards and AppleTV's in the exceptions. And boom, every board was happily visible and the connection speed even at peak traffic times is even faster than it ever was before.

So if you're in a bigger environment and you have issues with AirPlay, maybe this'll help you out. Our guess is that Apple changed something in the AirPlay protocol that screwed everything up a bit.

I found a way to stream videos on Apple TV by using Elmedia Player instead of airflow (which doesn't work anymore for now).

Works as well for me too with Elmedia (just sad I had to purchased a license when I have already an Airflow License).

But still, why Apple did change something that was working perfectly before ???

I understand now, you are streaming from the device.

screen mirroring may be your only solution, however, there should be Apple TV versions of the apps that you stream through, So you could move your streaming activities directly to the Apple TV, If there are corresponding apps to the streaming websites that you use

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

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?

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…

Hi,

My configuration is :

Apple TV : A2737 (Gen4) with tvOS26 unfortunately.

MacBook Air M1 with Tahoe 26.0

Both are on the same WIFI network.

I use to stream videos on my Apple TV Airflow app. It works perfectly until I made the choice to update my Mac and my Apple TV to 26.

I thought why not, my phone works well now.

But now, I can not stream anything because apparently Apple has change the airplay protocol.

So if anyone has an idea to make it work again, will be great and very welcome.

Thank you.

Sincerely

P.S : I use also two AirPods on my Apple TV in order to have a good sound (and not the one from my tv).

[Edited by Moderator]

Airplay is just a way to streaming things thru the Apple TV on your TV. And right now, airplay doesn't work anymore with Airflow. And I can't find the way on my Mac to use Airplay to stream a movie on my Apple TV either. :/