Today, your phone is the center of your life. You use it to communicate, listen to music or podcasts, and watch videos. Or maybe you use great apps to track your spending, exercise, and if you’re smart, you actually use your smartphone to make your life better.
But smartphones have very small speakers. And tiny screens. That’s why, at the end of the day, you might want to listen to music/podcasts from a speaker connected to your PC or HTPC. If you have an iOS device, this becomes super easy thanks to AirPlay.
What you’ll need: Unlike our guide to streaming media from PC/Mac to iOS devices, this guide doesn’t need as many tools. All you need is a desktop app, that’s it. The built-in AirPlay support on iOS takes care of the rest. Oh, and both the computer and the iOS device will need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
How to Enable AirPlay on Mac and PC Using Kodi (XBMC)
Kodi (formerly XBMC) is an official media center that supports all kinds of streaming protocols like DLNA, UPnP and of course AirPlay. Both Mac and Windows apps support it.
If you just want to use XBMC as a streaming endpoint, you don’t really need to set up the app, you just need to change two settings. Go System -> Setting -> Service.
Here, first go to Zeroconf and check Announce these services to other systems through Zeroconf.
Then from broadcasting below, activate Allow XBMC to receive AirPlay content.
That’s it, AirPlay is now enabled.
On your iOS device, start playing any kind of music or podcast and bring up the Control Center. Here you will see the AirPlay button. Click it and XBMC (or Kodi) will show up. Tap that and the output will instantly change from the device to the speaker attached to your computer.
Kodi supports video streaming via AirPlay, but it didn’t work for me. While it officially supports video playback via AirPlay, it didn’t work when I tried it. It may be because of iOS 8 that Apple changed some AirPlay protocols. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in future updates. Let me know if video streaming is right for you.
How to use Shairport4w to stream music from iOS devices to Windows
If you want a simple utility to do one simple thing on your Windows PC – stream audio from an iOS device – just get Shairport4w.
When you install it, just remember to uncheck the recording plugin option. Otherwise, the app will record everything you’re streaming from your iOS device, and that might not be what you want.
When you start the application, it will run in the background and show up in the system tray. You can change Airport name if you want, by default it will be your PC name.
Drag the Control Center in iOS and from the AirPlay section select the name of your PC (for me it was “KP-PC”) and playback will begin. The app also displays album art and track metadata.
Unlike Kodi, Shairport4w does not support video streaming but only audio files.
How do you listen to music?
What is your favorite way of listening to music? Headset, speaker phone or sound room equipped? Let us know in the comments below.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
