It is fairly OK in terms of the compatibility across Apple products - as always for the ecosystem. However, the way it works is totally poor - when the apps is closed (either by user or somehow killed by iOS) the airplay connection drops. In opposite, content played by chromecast seems to sustain individually, regardless of the apps status.
Even I am using iPhone and have an Apple computer at home, a chromecast hardware is installed and more frequently used than Airplay.
Do anyone else experience similar as me?
Works fine… you just need to control the device instead of casting to it… well, atleast with HomePods etc.
AirPlay is so buggy for me. YouTube is the worst offender so far. I always have to click a video, it will buffer forever so I have to dismiss the video which causes YouTube to lag then tap the video again and now it will load… very irritating.
It’s also a lot easier to share a lot of pictures by making a cloud folder and sharing a link (Google photos) than trying to airdrop a ton of photos.
If only Airplay works for Netflix and everything
Not a comparison. The equivalent to chromecast is the remote control to apple tv. Airplay is just a way to cast whatever is playing to a different screen whereas chromecast is a remote control to tell the target device to play what you want (all decoding and processing are done on the target device)
for me the biggest issue is that, if i stream a song or a video via airplay and want to look or hear something else on my phone, the stream stops and the new audio/video starts playing on the streaming device. Chromecast doesn’t have that problem, i can stream music from spotify to the home speakers and watch a youtube video on my phone, at the same time without interfering.
You can do that too with Airplay.
Wait that’s what I love most about it versus Bluetooth. I can connect and still use my phone without the sound playing through speakers. Why is ours different?
No problem. Just change control source (or “unit” or whatever the correct term is) on your iPhone before playing something new, and your airplay will continue while you can see your other thing on your phone.
So convenient………
Never heard of that, how do you do it and why do I have to do that?
It’s like when I’m listening to the radio and scrolling something that has auto play ads and it continuously cuts off the radio in favour of the ad. It just shouldn’t happen
Why do you (force) close the app though?
I never had this problem. An app actively playing media (and properly telling this to iOS, so media controls appear) also does not get killed by iOS.
Sometimes when I do a lot of multi-tasking, the app is killed by iOS. A possible flaw could be from the app itself, but the logic behind airplay also plays a key part.
Wild that in 2023 you have to explain that you want to multitask on an iPhone and getting downvoted for it.
It is most definitely a problem of the app. I have never seen an app actively playing media being terminated by iOS. That’s really disruptive for the user, and Apple usually protects the user experience from stuff like this. But do to this, the app has to correctly communicate to iOS that it is actively playing media.
The upside of AirPlay is that it works with everything. Chromecast needs to be supported by the service you want to cast so the phone can hand off the connection to the Chromecast (something that AirPlay can actually also do, at least for video). But if an app / service does not support it, using the device as a streaming relay is the only way to enable casting of basically everything.
More likely the app crashed
New iPhone 15 Pro user here coming from 13 years of Android. IMHO AirPlay works much better than Chromecast. More reliable, more seamless connection and faster in general.
AirPlay is one of the better functionalities of iOS and after tinkering with the alternatives for a long time, I don’t even bother to try anything else. Apple has been forced to restrict the functionality for restrictions imposed by the media companies and others, while quiet about the “… cast “.
As a long time user of Apple, I can say that the media licensing is tougher on Apple than the others, who seem to get a free pass even in the US. So Apple prefers to play it safe from a legal pov.
If you have an appleTV (how I play music through my stereo) you can “control other devices” and play apple music for instance without it needing to run on the initiating device. Same happens for some other apps, where the receiving app can take over.
I think op should’ve been more clear, I’m assuming he doesn’t have an Apple TV device and is using AirPlay built into a modern tv, which I am doing a home theater setup with new 8k tvs and will still opt to use an Apple TV 4K (till the 8k comes out) lossless music to the stereo and no ads when streaming my content. It’s a tv using an Apple api no apple hardware whatsoever
AirPlay’s current state is indeed inferior than ChromeCasr
That’s because I believe Apple Music is the only service which will play through the AirPlay device with your iPhone being simply a remote. Every other service is simply cast from your phone (plays directly on your phone) so closing the app terminates the streaming. It’s definitely inferior to Chromecast and Spotify connect in the way this works but it’s just Apple’s closed ecosystem
it’s because chromecast devices have in-built apps like yt, spotify, etc whatever you’re streaming so it’s actually not your phone streaming but chromecast itself (or the in-built chromecast in your smarttv) that’s why you can do whatever in the background on your phone while the stream continues
not the same for devices with airplay functionality, except appleTV.
just buy an apple tv lol scrub (/s)
What are the differences? I’ve never used either