Can't Select Airplay Device for Output Audio

DenverBroncosTD said:

It shows up as one of the options, but when I select it to automatically reselects the built-in speakers. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

Same problem here. Hope someone knows a solution.

Restarting the Airport base station solved it for me.

weird...same here!
Thanks pal...i could have find out myself

Same issue

Same problem here. My 2008 iMac with Mountain Lion sees both my Apple TV and my AirPort Express but it won't let me keep the choice of either in the Sound pane of System Preferences (it bounces it back to "headphones" for my attached speakers). I tried restarting the AirPort Express but that did not help. I do have it password protected and nothing has prompted me for a password the way iTunes initially does. (Airplay does work normally with iTunes on my computer.)

Update: I restarted my computer to address another bug and Airplay started working.

wlow3 said:

Same problem here. My 2008 iMac with Mountain Lion sees both my Apple TV and my AirPort Express but it won't let me keep the choice of either in the Sound pane of System Preferences (it bounces it back to "headphones" for my attached speakers). I tried restarting the AirPort Express but that did not help. I do have it password protected and nothing has prompted me for a password the way iTunes initially does. (Airplay does work normally with iTunes on my computer.)

Update: I restarted my computer to address another bug and Airplay started working.

Click to expand...

Same here - rebooting my 2009 iMac fixes the problem. Quite annoying and I hope Apple addresses this because it is the main reason I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

I have the same problem... running Mountain Lion on a new Macbook Air 2012 model and I have the new Apple TV. If I restart my Mac, the problem seems to disappear... I think the problem may occur when other devices have recently Airplay'ed something to the Apple TV... my girlfriend and I Airplay music to the ATV from 4 different devices (3 iOS and one OS X).

Same problem here. ATV3 + late 2011 MBP.

It's a bug and should resolve after restarting your Mac. However it will happen again after few uses.

Same problem! (retina mbp + ATV3).

Killing coreaudio fixed it for me without a reboot:
sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`

Had same issue up to ML 10.8.0.1 on my MBA 2012. However, after upgrade to 10.8.0.2 I have no seen it so far.

EDIT: Happend again today aftrer 23 days of uptime. However, restarting coreaudiod as suggested above fixed the problem. Now I have reported this to Apple.

Airplay bug

The fix posted by -rhys- worked for me too. Thanks.
I wonder why the last 2 messages in this thread are dated 27th Oct when today is only 21st. Another bug?

rogerjeffs said:

I wonder why the last 2 messages in this thread are dated 27th Oct when today is only 21st.

Click to expand...

Probably because today we are 21:th of November, not October when those were written.

Try restarting Wi-Fi only

I was able to get my Airplay enabled speakers selected after just turning off and turning back on my Wi-Fi. A little easier than a full OSX restart.

The solution!

odog101 said:

I was able to get my Airplay enabled speakers selected after just turning off and turning back on my Wi-Fi. A little easier than a full OSX restart.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, had exactly the same problem and switching on and off the WIFI fixed it immediately

-rhys- said:

Same problem! (retina mbp + ATV3).

Killing coreaudio fixed it for me without a reboot:
sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`

Click to expand...

Worked for me. Gonna keep this one handy until Apple fixes this permanently. Thanks rhys!

Great Tip

This was killin' me. Great tip, works perfectly every time...

-rhys- said:

Same problem! (retina mbp + ATV3).

Killing coreaudio fixed it for me without a reboot:
sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`

Click to expand...

mattyv123 said:

This was killin' me. Great tip, works perfectly every time...

Click to expand...

Same here, worked like a charm. Irritating that Apple still hasn't fixed this issue. Hope everyone filed a radar.

Hack to make the coreaudio fix easier

Love the sudo command to reboot coreaudio, works like a charm.

I hate that I have to do that but I made it a little bit easier by making an alias.

• Open terminal and type:
  
  Code:

  vi ~/.bash_profile

• and add the line:
  
  Code:

  alias fixairplay="sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`"

• Save the file and close vi wq)
• Restart terminal
• Then type in:
  
  Code:

  fixairplay

• Type in your password and...
• Voila! You should be good.

Now each time you run into the issue just type fixairplay in terminal and you're good to go!

thx + pkill

Thanks a bunch for this solution guys! I've got the same problem, and it usually started working again by reconnecting to the wifi or sleeping/unsleeping the mac, but suddenly that stopped working too.

FYI; the command 'pkill' will kill a process by name, so a tad easier solution would be:

alias help

bandydesign said:

Love the sudo command to reboot coreaudio, works like a charm.

I hate that I have to do that but I made it a little bit easier by making an alias.

• Open terminal and type:
  
  Code:

  vi ~/.bash_profile

• and add the line:
  
  Code:

  alias fixairplay="sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`"

• Save the file and close vi wq)
• Restart terminal
• Then type in:
  
  Code:

  fixairplay

• Type in your password and...
• Voila! You should be good.

Now each time you run into the issue just type fixairplay in terminal and you're good to go!

Click to expand...

This is a great tip and while the code works perfectly, I cannot get the alias to work. Followed the steps above, confirmed the code was saved to ~/.bash_profile, but when I enter "fixairplay" I get <command not found>

You just need to load your bash_profile.

Do this at the terminal prompt in your home directory:
. .bash_profile

Then your alias should work.

HTH.

bandydesign said:

Love the sudo command to reboot coreaudio, works like a charm.

I hate that I have to do that but I made it a little bit easier by making an alias.

• Open terminal and type:
  
  Code:

  vi ~/.bash_profile

• and add the line:
  
  Code:

  alias fixairplay="sudo kill `ps -ax | grep 'coreaudiod' | grep 'sbin' |awk '{print $1}'`"

• Save the file and close vi wq)
• Restart terminal
• Then type in:
  
  Code:

  fixairplay

• Type in your password and...
• Voila! You should be good.

Now each time you run into the issue just type fixairplay in terminal and you're good to go!

Click to expand...

Logged in just to upvote this. Thanks dude.

Toggle Bluetooth fixes this for me

I am having the same issue with my late 2010 13" MacBook Air with latest updates. I find that when it refuses to select an output device that toggling Bluetooth on or off resolves the issue for me. Frustrating I have to deal with this but at least toggling Bluetooth is a fast operation (though likely not an option if you use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse).

Thanks

Killing coreaudio fixed it here as well. 2013 iMac.

I just can't imagine why this problem is not yet solved...