MacBook Pro doesn't see Bartok for AirPlay

Support
1

My older MacBook Pro, running Catalina, doesn’t see (list) my Bartok as an AirPlay option. It shows an Apple TV and a couple of Rokus, but not the Bartok. My iPhone 13, on the other hand, plays through the Bartok via AirPlay just fine.

Any insights or suggestions would be much appreciated.

2

Hi Michael, welcome to the community.

Presumably both your MacBook Pro and your iPhone are accessing the Bartok via the same WiFi Access Point? Since your iPhone sees the Bartok, that suggests both your dCS and your network are just fine, so the problem must be with the Macbook/MacOS. There are a couple of things you can check on your Macbook;

  • Make sure it doesn’t have any funky firewall settings
  • Likewise “Screen Time”, best to turn it off
  • Also, try launching the Bonjour Browser app from you MacBook Pro; select your local network, see if it finds the Bartok when forced to search. You should see a window like this;

BonjourBrowser
BonjourBrowser1024×679 39.1 KB

I can’t remember if Catalina comes with the Bonjour Browser, if it doesn’t try the free “Discovery” App from the Apple Appstore, it does the same thing.

3

Just as an aside, while AirPlay is indeed convenient, it also sounds decidedly worse than playing content over USB.

4

Thanks, Bill. I assumed that, but find that I occasionally want to play something from YouTube or somewhere, which I’ve to date been sending via AirPlay/Apple TV to my (modest) home theater system. Sending those things to my separate (and much less modest) stereo system should at least be an improvement.

5

Thanks, Anup. I can get the Discovery app, and though it looks a bit different, I can open Airplay, and the Bartok is listed among the AirPlay devices. But when I open the airplay menu on the MacBook, only the two Rokus and the Apple TV (Living Room) are displayed. So the Bartok is clearly there, and can be seemingly seen by the MacBook, but not accessed through it. Additional guidance? Trying to include a Discovery screenshot bot not sure it’s going through…
Screen Shot 2022-06-26 at 5.26.01 PM

6

Right, so that confirms there’s no underlying network-layer issue on your Macbook Pro.

I wonder if resetting the networking stack might clear out any cached/blocked addresses under Catalina :thinking: Maybe try the following?

7

Reset the Network settings, rebooted the machine, and ended up with the same result. :man_shrugging:

Oh well. It’s a 10 yr old MacBook, maybe that has something to do with it. Fortunately, pretty much anything I wanted to play via Airplay from that Mac I can do with my phone.

Thanks for your help!

Michael

8

I took a quick look at Apple’s support community, looks like Airplay problems on Catalina is not uncommon. Here’s one example, where he found his Checkpoint VPN application was interfering with Airplay;

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251643950

Maybe a TimeMachine backup and fresh MacOS re-install might fix it :wink:

9

Unfortunately the MacBook is old enough that I can’t move beyond Catalina. But fortunately I have a workaround in that I can just use my phone as the source, which though not as convenient sometimes is definitely less trouble.

Thanks for your suggestions and help though!