AirPlay not working in macOS Tahoe

ChatGPT and I have spent hours trying to fix this problem. Here is GPT's conclusion after I did a lot of testing:

macOS 26 + Music AirPlay Bug (Summary)

What happens

• AirPlay devices (HomePods, AVR, Sonos) appear in Music and can be checked, but audio is silent.
• Mid-track dropouts.
• Master Volume stops working (global slider has no effect).
• Only reliable fix in-session: uncheck all AirPlay devices, then re-check (toggling just one doesn’t work).

What’s not the problem

• Devices are online and reachable.
• Network config is fine (same setup works on iOS and on a fresh macOS 26 install).
• Static IPs don’t solve it (issue persists even with pinned addresses).
• Configure IPv6 setting from Off to Link-Local Only had no effect
• There is no VPN on this system

What’s really happening

• Logs show AirPlayXPCHelper probing non-existent IPs (e.g., 192.168.50.x, 192.168.4.x) and timing out.
• Sometimes it “self-heals” after long idle; other times it stays stuck until forced to rebind.

Workarounds

• Toggle all AirPlay devices off/on inside Music.
• When Master Volume is dead or audio is silent, killing and restarting the coreaudiod and AirPlayXPCHelperprocesses restores functionality.

Conclusion

This is a macOS 26 AirPlay stack bug: AirPlayXPCHelper caches bad addresses and gets stuck in a “connected but silent / master volume unresponsive” state. Apple needs to fix the helper’s discovery/cache logic and session state handling.

Downgraded the airport firmware to 7.6.9 and that did the trick for me.

Can be easily done in Airport Utility, option click on the firmware version number and select the lower one.

Apple Support acknowledged to me over the phone that this is a known issue in MacOS Tahoe 26.0 and that many, many people have AirPlay issues in Tahoe. My case number is 10************. We are going to have to wait for a bug fix release to resolve this issue completely.

[Edited by Moderator]

Solution: System Settings > Wifi > click "details" next to your wifi network > select TCP/IP tab. Change "Configure IPv6" setting from Off to "Link-Local Only".

Thanks - this helped. I had to turn off IPV6 on my Mac due to some issues with ZScaler app and changing this setting helped.

Simple settings issue

Solution go to:

Settings/WIFI/"the connected network name"-details button/ TCP/IP / configure IPv6

and set it to link-local Only

voila, good as before.

why apple shoots itself in the foot like that, hard to say.

The 'solution' is fine unless you want to restart your computer, in which case you have to keep repeating this. The other solution is to turn the vpn off (if using one) connect to airplay and then turn the vpn back on. This has to be done every time also.

I've already contacted apple who say it may be the vpn, however, as so many others are getting this I'd assume it's more likely something to do with the music app.

I just stumbled on a fix for me. This has been so frustrating. I am using ethernet from my mac to my router. I people are talking about going from ipv6 disabled to local link, but I don't have anything like disabled, so I just made ethernet Make Inactive, and then re-enabled, and voila! airplay is back! It works sometimes for hours, and sometimes for days, but always just stops working. I have had to restart to fix it, because I couldn't figure out which processes to kill before finding this thread. anyway, that didn't work for me.

I am astonished that I just installed Tahoe 26.0.1 and this issue is not fixed! I still have to reselect all my AirPlay devices which doesn't even always work. Master volume control stops randomly so I have to kill the coreaudio and airplay helper processes. Seriously? Does anyone at Apple even use their products? From what I've read, this problem is known and widespread. Guess I'll just keep running my kill scripts until they fix it. Ugh.

Feel free to send Apple a bug report.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

I've got the same problem. Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe I can't use Airplay from Mac mini (M4) or MacBook Air (M3). Works fine in iPadOS and iOS 26. Screenshot of error when trying to Airplay to Sonos, but it's the same when trying to stream to any device from a Mac.

[Edited by Moderator]

holy carp, thank you! hours of pointless troubleshooting. not sure how i did not search in a way to get this earlier. of course, "tahoe 26 airplay" ends up with page after page of Chevy-related search results.

The Configure IPv6 change did not fix it for me. Everything worked fine right after the upgrade. Then yesterday Music sees the Airplay devices but no sound goes to them. I have to uncheck and recheck all of them for music to come out of my HomePods. The volume control also stops working sometimes. Music has also stopped counting plays. Ugh.

it continues to work for me, flawlessly.

i thoroughly tested, alone and with Apple ts, all possible issues. basically, i confirmed nothing else in my system was the cause of this issue. other than this, my MBA was fine. for me, this worked perfectly. each of us has a different set-up, so not every fix works for everyone.

this did for me. like a miracle.

I have a similar problem. Tahoe broke my Airplay with my AppleTV. I have restarted all devices, deselected and reselected them. No change.

I can see the checkbox initially displaying a "√" and then turning into a "-" after less than two seconds.

All other speakers (non-Apple branded) are working. That's the weirdest bug ever.