Apple airplay what do you need

These controls can be found in Control Centre by swiping up from the bottom of your iPhone screen. One feature possible with AirPlay 2 is the ability to play different songs in different rooms, although only Apple Music subscribers can take advantage of it.

You can simply ask Siri to play one song on one speaker, and another on one in a different room. Another feature of AirPlay 2 is the ability for multiple users to add songs to one playlist. Say you're at a party, and one person has their iPhone as the music source, playing Apple Music - other Apple Music users are able to send songs they want played to the source iPhone, to save having to connect and reconnect several phones.

Provided you have tvOS 11 or later, your Apple TV can send audio to speakers around your home as well, rather than just coming from your iPhone or iPad. Whatever speaker is connected to the Apple TV, be it a soundbar or speaker system, is automatically a de facto AirPlay 2 speaker. Meira Gebel. Apple's AirPlay feature allows users to stream videos, images, music, and other forms of media from an Apple device to another compatible device.

Visit Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories. Meira Gebel is a freelance reporter based in Portland, Oregon. She writes about business, culture, and technology for Insider. Feel free to reach out to her on Twitter, where she can be found most of the time, MeiraGebel. Additional comments. Email optional. Let's break it down. AirPlay 2 has a number of different uses. You can use it to mirror an iPhone or Mac on another screen great for sharing video and pictures ; you can stream video from a compatible app to a TV Netflix, Hulu etc ; and you can stream audio to speakers.

Previously AirPlay was a one-to-one protocol, from your phone to a compatible speaker, AV receiver or other piece of gear. While this made it comparable to Bluetooth audio streaming, AirPlay also generally sounded better, thanks to the wider bandwidth that Wi-Fi provides.

From its inception Apple has maintained that AirPlay 2 would be "built throughout iOS," enabling users to play music from the Apple Music app as well as third-party apps. Not only that, but making music playback possible from wherever you are in the house. AirPlay 2 adds the ability to stream music to multiple audio devices all at the same time. You could use it to call up a song on your iPhone and play it in multiple rooms simultaneously, or pick and choose which AirPlay speaker to stream to.

Yep, AirPlay can finally party. Apple's AirPlay 2 was a long time coming. What's the big deal? First and foremost, AirPlay 2 supports multi-room streaming. Apple is rarely at the bleeding edge with new technologies, but even by its standards, was a little late to be joining the multi-room party — such devices had become a household staple over the preceding decade or so.

But typically Apple, when it did finally join it became the life and soul of the party, with knockout performance and products to compliment it. But what's the big deal with AirPlay 2, and which products support it? And if you already own an AirPlay product, can it be automatically updated or will you need to buy new AirPlay 2 devices? We have all the answers…. The first iteration of AirPlay launched back in as part of iOS 4 around the time of the iPhone 4.

Originally it was a way to stream audio, video and photos wirelessly to the Apple TV, but eventually this opened up to include dedicated audio products. During the early days of AirPlay, setting products up was a complicated, long-winded process that required an extra app — it was hardly seamless. Updates to AirPlay over the years have made the setup process much simpler and quicker, and streaming is far more reliable.

As long as your Apple device and the AirPlay speaker are on the same wi-fi network, music can be streamed between the two at the tap of a button.