AirPlayServer for Windows

AirPlayServer receives AirPlay video, audio, and screen mirroring on Windows.

This project is an updated fork of fingergit/airplay2-win.

Main Screen

Settings	Pin Approval

Viewer

Controls	PIP (Picture in Picture) Mode

Install

1. Download AirPlay2-Win-x64.zip.
2. Extract the archive.
3. Install Bonjour for Windows if it is not already installed. iTunes also includes Bonjour.
4. Run AirPlayServer.exe.

The app warns you at startup if Bonjour is missing or its service is not running.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or later, x64
• Apple Bonjour for Windows, used for device discovery over mDNS

Features

• Screen mirroring and audio from iOS and macOS; unsupported standalone URL/HLS playback is not advertised
• 30 and 60 FPS quality presets
• GPU texture upload and YUV to RGB conversion
• Frame pacing for smoother playback
• Live window resizing
• Receiver resolution matched to a monitor or set manually
• Automatic Bonjour service advertisement

Use AirPlayServer

1. Start AirPlayServer.
2. Open Control Center on an iPhone or iPad, or open the AirPlay menu on a Mac.
3. Select the Windows PC from the list.
4. Start mirroring or playback.

Receiver resolution

Open Settings and use AirPlay resolution to control the display size advertised to macOS. Match receiver monitor is the default: while the receiver is idle, move its window to the Windows monitor you want to match. The advertised size follows that monitor's current mode.

Select Custom to enter an exact width and height, such as 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440. Resolution changes are applied when the receiver is idle. Stop and reconnect Screen Mirroring on the Mac to negotiate the new size; an active stream is never interrupted.

Debug logging

To collect diagnostics for playback or audio-output switching issues, start the server with AirPlayServer.exe --debug. A new timestamped log is written for each run under %LOCALAPPDATA%\AirPlayServer\logs (or the system temporary directory if LOCALAPPDATA is unavailable). The log includes startup and shutdown, connection/device identifiers, AirPlay protocol messages, playback and volume callbacks, thread IDs, and unhandled exception details. Debug mode is opt-in and does not create log files during normal launches.

Optional AirPlay PIN

Enable Require PIN from the home screen to approve new connections with a temporary four-digit code. The PIN exists only in memory for the current server session and is never written to disk.

Hide PIN from screen capture protects the code from supported Windows recording APIs. After you accept a connection, AirPlayServer enables capture exclusion and waits one second before displaying the PIN locally. The exclusion remains active until the device connects or you cancel. If Windows cannot enable capture exclusion, the app does not display the PIN.

Controls

Key	Action
H	Toggle session controls
Ctrl+Shift+H	Toggle capture privacy
P	Toggle picture-in-picture mode
F or double-click	Toggle fullscreen
F1	Toggle diagnostics while connected
R	Rotate video 90 degrees clockwise
Mouse wheel	Zoom from fit to 5x
Left-drag while zoomed	Pan the video
Mouse movement	Show the cursor; it hides after five seconds

The session controls include Hide from captures. This keeps the receiver visible on the local monitor, excludes its main window from supported Windows capture APIs, and sends a black frame to the clean feed. Select Show in captures or press Ctrl+Shift+H to turn it off.

Select Picture in picture or press P to open a small, borderless window that stays above other apps. PiP uses the current device's aspect ratio when resized. Move the pointer over the window to reveal the close button. You can drag the invisible strip along the top to move it. Press P again to restore the previous window size, position, and maximized state. PiP also closes when the device disconnects.

Screen Cast and the OBS clean feed

Enable Screen Cast mode from the session controls to create a separate video-only window named AirPlay Receiver - Clean Feed. The normal receiver window remains available on the local display.

To use it in OBS:

1. Add a Window Capture source and choose the Windows 10/11 capture method.
2. Select AirPlay Receiver - Clean Feed.
3. Turn off Capture Cursor in OBS.

In Discord, open Share Your Screen, choose Applications, and select AirPlay Receiver - Clean Feed. The window exists only while a device is connected and AirPlayServer is rendering video.

The clean feed follows rotation, zoom, pan, and receiver window resizing. Crop clean feed to video removes letterboxing and pillarboxing. AirPlayServer hides the clean feed between sessions and restores it after a device reconnects.

Hide interface from captures excludes the local receiver from supported Display Capture paths on Windows 10 version 2004 and later. It is meant to keep controls out of a presentation. It is not DRM. Use Window Capture in OBS for the clean feed.

Quality presets

You can change the preset from the session controls while video is playing.

Preset	FPS	Scaling	Intended use
Best	30	Best available	Sharpest image
Balanced	60	Best available	Default setting
Low latency	60	Linear	Fastest response

Troubleshooting

The device does not appear

• Check that Bonjour is installed and that Bonjour Service is running in services.msc.
• Put both devices on the same Wi-Fi network and subnet.
• Allow AirPlayServer through Windows Firewall on private networks.

The device connects but video or audio does not play

• If Windows is running in a virtual machine, use bridged networking instead of NAT.
• Disconnect any VPN or proxy that may be intercepting the local connection.

Headless adapter

The MirrorSimAdapter sidecar exposes protocol 0.8.0, including bounded H.264 access-unit and interleaved signed 16-bit PCM audio events, sender-volume changes, receiver-reported source/video geometry, and explicit mirror sender pause/resume events over JSONL. The source-screen shape provides orientation without mistaking a separate landscape media surface for a rotated phone. Video and audio serialization run on bounded worker queues so a busy desktop client cannot block the AirPlay network callback; overloaded video output drops forward to the next decoder keyframe instead of building an unbounded backlog, and repeated codec-only packets are deduplicated.

When a host sets MIRRORSIM_EXTERNAL_DNSSD=1, the headless adapter skips its Bonjour client registration and lets the host advertise _airplay._tcp and _raop._tcp itself. MIRRORSIM_HARDWARE_ADDRESS accepts the shared 12-digit hexadecimal discovery identity, keeping AirPlay identity stable between the native protocol server and the external advertiser.

The headless adapter advertises mirroring and audio capabilities only. Media apps therefore remain inside the mirrored screen instead of handing standalone playback to the receiver's intentionally unsupported URL/HLS path.

Mirror timing requests use a 300 ms response window and a three-second cadence. Timing failures and AirPlay control lifecycle transitions are summarized on stderr for MirrorSim diagnostics without flooding the sender or the support log.

Build from source

The projects target Visual Studio 2026 with the v145 toolset and a Windows 10 SDK. With Visual Studio 2022, build from a Developer Command Prompt using msbuild AirPlay.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 /p:PlatformToolset=v143 /m.

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/xenos1337/AirPlayServer.git

2. Open AirPlay.sln in Visual Studio.

3. In Solution Explorer, right-click AirPlayServer and select Set as Startup Project.

4. Build with Ctrl+B or run with F5.

The Debug executable is written to x64\Debug\AirPlayServer.exe.

Project layout

AirPlayServer/
|-- AirPlayServer/           # Windows GUI, SDL2, and ImGui
|   |-- CSDLPlayer.cpp       # Video and audio playback
|   |-- CImGuiManager.cpp    # Home screen and session controls
|   |-- CAirServer.cpp       # AirPlay server wrapper
|   `-- CAirServerCallback.cpp
|-- AirPlayServerLib/        # AirPlay 2 protocol library
|   `-- lib/                 # RAOP, pairing, crypto, and codecs
|-- airplay2dll/             # DLL wrapper and FFmpeg H.264 decoder
|-- MirrorSimAdapter/        # Headless JSONL adapter
|-- tests/                   # Codec and protocol smoke tests
|-- dnssd/                   # Bonjour discovery DLL
|-- external/                # SDL2, FFmpeg, ImGui, and other dependencies
`-- AirPlay.sln

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome. Follow the existing C++ and Windows API style, test on Windows 10 or 11, and update the documentation when behavior changes.

License

Repository-authored code is provided under the MIT license. The receiver also uses OSI-approved third-party components, including dynamically linked FFmpeg under LGPL-2.1-or-later, libplist under LGPL-2.1-or-later, and PlayFair interoperability code under GPL-3.0. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for component scope, exact FFmpeg build provenance, source availability, and license locations.

Credits

Thanks to fingergit and the AirPlay reverse engineering community.

This is an unofficial implementation. Apple, AirPlay, and related trademarks belong to Apple Inc.