Play Safari displayed videos from Mac to Apple TV with sound also at Mac

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
A neighbour of mine posed this question... He has a second generation Apple TV and wondered if my 4th generation Apple TV works differently...

If he is on his Mac and is playing music (e.g.. youtube) via Safari on his Mac, he would like to use Airplay to hear it on his Apple TV but he would also like the audio to also come out of his Mac connected speakers or headphones. (A different room)

I experimented and started up Airplay and sent my Mac stuff to my Apple TV. The sound came out on the TV in the family room. Then I went to the menu bar and under the speaker icon, there was a check mark next to "Apple TV" but there was also a choice for
Headphones. I clicked on the "headphones" line that appeared there. It became checked too but the "Apple TV" item also remained checked suggesting both outputs were in play. However the sound then came out at my Mac but was no longer playing in the family room on the TV.

Is it possible to have it in both places? And if not why do they show both "Apple TV" and "Headphones" outputs selected under the speaker icon in the menu bar at that time?
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
You can't, and the check marks appearing in two places is probably a bug.

A third-party product from rogueamoeba.com, called Airfoil, might be able to assist. You can download a demo to experiment with.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Thanks for this tip, Chas,

I downloaded Airfoil and tried it today. It seems to do exactly what my neighbour was trying to accomplish and works very well.

The free trial injects noise over the audio after 10 minutes of use which is very fair and still allows further playing to evaluate the purchase. And quitting the app and relaunches seems to give another 10 minutes of clean audio to test further. More than fair so I feel this company is more than fair and worthy of support.

I have passed on this information to my neighbour and invited him over if he wants to see it in operation, but as the free trial works so well he may just pursue it from here himself.

Thanks again, I (we) would never have discovered this app on our own without your suggestion.
 
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