Airflow – Stream media files directly from macOS to AirPlay devices
airflow.app
airflow.app
I wish the app was a more native feeling UI, and I feel they could be doing deeper integration to enable more video playing. I'm a little worried that the app is out of development, but hoping they keep it going for new versions of macOS and AirPlay.
Why? The last app release was Jan 3rd 2025, so about 3 weeks ago.
But even if it was older, once an app fulfills is purpose and is free of bugs and security holes, does it still need to be updated constantly?
Subscription-based software: "Hold my beer!"
(This isn't one of those, which is great, I might buy a license just to support the ecosystem of regular paid apps).
My main concern is OS updates and AirPlay protocol changes breaking it, which would mean that it would no longer fulfil its purpose. AirPlay, being a proprietary protocol, is ripe for breaking third party integrations.
Then you can safely ignore your other concern:
> doesn't appear to have changed its feature set or UI
Those things aren’t related, you don’t need to change the UI or features to maintain core functionality.
I've been a happy paid AirFlow user for about a decade now, but I realize it's small indie sometimes buggy software.
The way it turns 5.1 audio into stereo (optionally boosting dialogue) is also quite good for some shows, I wish something as good was available in other players.
I don't think it's out of development. I thought of posting this specifically because I got an update banner when I opened it.
I'm very curious what even gives you that impression. If you follow the link to their Github, it's got 38.5k stars, 14.6k forks, 3190 contributors, 92 releases, the most recent commit is from an hour ago. The most recent release is from last month.
RAOP Discover is currently at the point «It just works until it doesn't» (like most things zeroconf). Behaves fairly reliably in my experience if you don't mind some latency.
Btw, consider moving to PipeWire instead as it's the preferred a/v daemon these days.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Streaming_audio_to...
And now this, apparantly.
Maybe it should be a feature included in macOS itself?
I’ve used VLC on the AppleTV since then.
If not, does anyone know of a solution for this? Right now I'm using Jump Desktop which actually does a good job, but consumes lots of extra bandwidth since it also streams the Mac's screen (at near 30fps).
It also starts with no errors if it comes across a codec it doesn't like (which is most of them) but then just... doesn't work.
Airplay is a big pile of technical debt and they keep rewiring it every few years and not testing if the implementations talk to each other, so it just gets worse and worse.
When you cast your screen to an Apple TV, the TV shows as an extra display on the computer, and allows you to set the aspect ratio however you'd like. Either when extending or mirroring.
Am I missing something?
As someone who prefers taller aspect ratios it's not a huge issue for me.
Now, when mirroring an ultrawide display, then it looks funky, but not really sure what you'd expect to happen.
Whereas Airflow is sending the original video steam over untouched, for supported codecs like h.264/265. So it maintains the original quality. Including resolutions that may be higher than your screen, like 4K.
That said, QuickTime Player also supports AirPlay to cast the video to an AirPlay device. I’m struggling to understand why I’d use AirFlow when I can use QuickTime? In my case I use Plex, which even makes QuickTime a moot point. I’ve also used VLC with the VLC AppleTV app; I could see where AirFlow could be an improvement over the rather clunky VLC experience (from what I remember).
Most h.264/265 files in the wild, QuickTime won't play. You have to repackage them with a couple of specific flags using ffmpeg.
QuickTime is great for playing videos produced by Apple devices, but terrible at playing media generally.
I will day, video formats seem to be much more standard (and compatible with QuickTime) than they were in the pre-h.264 days. Though I do tend to lean toward mp4 over mkv if given an option. I still have a second player around to handle stuff QuickTime fails on, but I only need it a few times per year.
I wish Jellyfin could catch-up with the compatibility level AirFlow has to offer.
Yes - as of 2025 - this application works and lets you AirPlay videos from your Mac to your god damned Roku.
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