Question

When AirPlay is enabled in a MPMoviePlayerController, it displays a text “This video is playing on device name “. When using AirPlay with an AVPlayer, is there any way to programatically get the device name?

Answer 1

After searching in other frameworks to get the name of the Apple TV you’re connected to, I finally found this information in the AudioToolbox framework. There may be other ways to get this, but so far I have not found another way. Hope this helps.

You’ll need to import the AudioToolbox framework:

#import <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h>

and then a method to call when you want to detect if airplay is available

- (BOOL)isAirplayActive {
  CFDictionaryRef currentRouteDescriptionDictionary = nil;
  UInt32 dataSize = sizeof(currentRouteDescriptionDictionary);
  AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteDescription, &dataSize, &currentRouteDescriptionDictionary);

  self.deviceOutputType = nil;
  self.airplayDeviceName = nil;

  if (currentRouteDescriptionDictionary) {
    CFArrayRef outputs = CFDictionaryGetValue(currentRouteDescriptionDictionary, kAudioSession_AudioRouteKey_Outputs);
    if(CFArrayGetCount(outputs) > 0) {
      CFDictionaryRef currentOutput = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(outputs, 0);

      //Get the output type (will show airplay / hdmi etc
      CFStringRef outputType = CFDictionaryGetValue(currentOutput, kAudioSession_AudioRouteKey_Type);

      //If you're using Apple TV as your ouput - this will get the name of it (Apple TV Kitchen) etc
      CFStringRef outputName = CFDictionaryGetValue(currentOutput, @"RouteDetailedDescription_Name");

      self.deviceOutputType = (NSString *)outputType;
      self.airplayDeviceName = (NSString *)outputName;

      return (CFStringCompare(outputType, kAudioSessionOutputRoute_AirPlay, 0) == kCFCompareEqualTo);
    }
  }
  return NO;
}