Posted By Paul Kafasis on April 21st, 2017

Update (May 18th, 2017): Airfoil for Mac 5.6 restores direct streaming to all models of Apple TV. Get the latest version now from the Airfoil page. It is now safe to update your Apple TV to the latest tvOS. When you do, you’ll only need the latest Airfoil for Mac to stream to the Apple TV. No additional software will be required.

Update (September 25th, 2017): Airfoil for Windows 5.2 and above restore full Apple TV compatibility as well. Grab the latest from the Airfoil for Windows page.

Late last month, we alerted users to an incompatibility between Airfoil and Apple TVs running tvOS 10.2. We’ve since been hard at work on restoring the ability to stream audio from Airfoil to the newest Apple TVs. We’ve attacked this problem in two ways, and while we’re not finished yet, we’re now close to a pair of solutions to get things working for our users.

Long-Term Solution: Airfoil Updates

We’re working diligently to restore Airfoil’s ability to stream directly to the Apple TV. We know our users want to stream audio from their Macs and PCs to Apple TVs, and we’re incredibly eager to get this functionality back for you. This work has required a great deal of research, along with no small amount of reverse engineering, and that unfortunately takes time.

Happily, we’ve recently completed the preliminary work to enable Airfoil to connect with tvOS-based Apple TVs. We now have a working prototype for this, and we’re working on bringing the functionality into Airfoil. Once that’s ready, we’ll ship free updates for Airfoil for Mac and Airfoil for Windows. While we can’t yet give release dates for these updates, you can be sure we’re working hard to get them to you.

Interim Solution: Airfoil Satellite TV

In parallel with our work on Airfoil itself, we’ve also been working on a second solution to enable you to stream audio from your computer to the Apple TV. Yesterday, we submitted the results of this work to the App Store, in the form of a new app called Airfoil Satellite TV.

You may know that the Airfoil Satellite name is used for applications which enable various devices to act as audio receivers for Airfoil. With Airfoil Satellite running on a device, Airfoil sees that device as an output to which it can stream audio. When your Apple TV is running Airfoil Satellite TV, you’ll again be able to send audio from your Mac or Windows machine to tvOS-based Apple TVs.

At this point, we’re just waiting on Apple and the App Store review process to get the first version of Airfoil Satellite TV to you. We’ll post just as soon as it’s available.

Almost There

We hope to have Airfoil Satellite TV approved and in the App Store very soon. Once that’s available, all Apple TV users will be again be able to receive audio from their Macs and PCs using Airfoil.

Soon after that, we’ll be providing free updates to Airfoil for Mac and Airfoil for Windows, enabling Airfoil to talk directly to the newest Apple TVs without requiring any other software. These Airfoil updates will take a bit longer, but we’ll have more news on them soon.

We’re certainly sorry for this temporary loss of functionality in Airfoil, and we’re working diligently to have the problem resolved very soon. Thank you for your patience, and please stay tuned for updates.