AirPipe FAQ

If you've started a stream and the speaker is connected but silent, work through these in order:

1. Make sure something is actually playing. AirPipe streams the audio your phone is currently producing. If no music app is playing, there's nothing for AirPipe to forward. Open Spotify, YouTube, your podcast app, or any other audio source and start playback.
2. Check the speaker's own volume. AirPipe sets a per-speaker volume independent of the speaker's physical volume knob. If the speaker is muted at the hardware level, AirPipe can't override that.
3. Check that the source app isn't muted. Some apps have an internal mute that's independent of the system volume.
4. Try a different source app. Some apps block being captured by other apps (see entries below). If switching to a known-working source like Firefox, VLC, or Pocket Casts produces audio at the speaker, the original app is the cause.

If none of those help, the more specific entries below probably apply.

Spotify needs to be a recent enough version. Older Spotify builds explicitly opted out of being captured by other apps; newer ones allow it.

• Version 9.1.42 (August 2025) and newer allow capture and should work with AirPipe.
• Version 9.0.66 (April 2024) and earlier block capture entirely. The fix is to update Spotify via the Play Store.
• Modded sideloaded Spotify (com.spotify.musix and similar) will not work. These modded packages keep the older "block all capture" setting in place to evade detection by screen recorders. Install the official Spotify from the Play Store instead.

To check your installed version, open the Play Store, search Spotify, and tap Update if one is available. After updating, fully close Spotify (swipe it out of recents) before starting a new AirPipe stream.

This is a known limitation in Android's audio system, not a bug in AirPipe.

Android keeps a per-app list of "may this app's audio be captured by other apps?" inside a system service called audioserver. As you use your phone, that list of opted-out apps tends to grow. Some media apps add themselves to it under conditions that aren't well documented (there's evidence it's a shared library many apps embed, not a deliberate choice by Spotify or similar). Once an app is on the list, AirPipe sees the audio coming through as silence.

The list is only cleared by a phone restart. No third-party app on the Play Store can clear it, including AirPipe. We've tested every workaround we know of and none of them resets that list from a regular app. The underlying issue has been reported to the Android team.

What helps, in order of how disruptive each option is:

1. Stop the AirPipe stream and start it again with a different source app. If only one app is affected, switching apps gets you past it.
2. Force-stop the source app in Android Settings, Apps, the app in question, Force stop. Start it fresh. This can sometimes release the source app's audio track and let it work again, depending on which audio path the app uses.
3. Restart your phone. This is the only deterministic fix today. After a restart the issue typically does not recur for hours or days, depending on usage.

We're actively working on smarter detection so AirPipe can name the specific app being silently filtered (instead of just saying "audio is silent"), plus prevention measures so AirPipe itself never ends up on the opt-out list. The underlying audio-system limitation that requires a restart needs a fix from Google.

AirPipe captures any audio your phone is currently playing through Android's standard AudioPlaybackCapture API. Whether a specific app's audio comes through depends on that app's own settings, not on AirPipe.

Reliably works in our testing:

• Firefox, Samsung Internet, and most non-Chromium browsers
• VLC, MX Player
• YouTube, the standard app, non-DRM streams
• Pocket Casts and most podcast apps
• Audiobookshelf, Plexamp
• Most games

Sometimes blocked dynamically (works after a phone restart, then can stop again until the next restart, see the entry above):

• Spotify, modern versions
• Chrome and Chromium-based browsers
• Telegram and other apps that embed common media SDKs

Never works (these apps explicitly block capture for DRM or platform-policy reasons, and there's no in-app workaround):

• Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple Music, Tidal, and most paid music streaming services
• Modded sideloaded apps that exist outside of the Play Store

If an app you care about isn't on either list, the simplest test is to stream it briefly with AirPipe. If the source app is clearly playing but you hear silence at the speaker, that app is blocking capture.

For most "no audio" cases, the source app or the Android audio system is the cause, not AirPipe.

• AirPipe streams whatever audio your phone hands to it. If Android filters out a specific app's audio, AirPipe receives silence and forwards silence.
• We have no way to override another app's choice to opt out of capture, and no app on the Play Store has access to the system-level audio routing controls that would help.
• We continuously test against real speakers (Bose Portable Home Speaker, Sony Bravia Theater Bar, shairport-sync, Music Assistant) and ship fixes for the issues we can fix on AirPipe's side, including multi-speaker timing and reconnect behaviour.

If you've worked through the relevant entries above and audio still isn't reaching the speaker, we'd genuinely like to know. Email the developer via the support address listed on the AirPipe Play Store page.

Some of what's described above we can mitigate from inside AirPipe over time:

• Smarter detection so the in-app banner can name the specific app being silently filtered, instead of saying "audio is silent."
• Prevention measures so AirPipe itself never ends up on the per-app opt-out list.
• Clearer recovery steps before the "restart your phone" advice kicks in.

The underlying Android limitation that requires a phone restart to clear the opt-out list is not something a Play Store app can fix. We've reported it to the Android team. Whether and when it's resolved is in their hands.

AirPipe streams audio over the AirPlay 1 (RAOP) protocol. Most modern AirPlay-compatible speakers and soundbars accept AirPlay 1 connections, even when they also support AirPlay 2.

Tested and reliable:

• Bose Portable Home Speaker
• Sony Bravia Theater Bar
• shairport-sync (Raspberry Pi and other Linux hosts)
• Music Assistant (when running as an AirPlay receiver)

Not supported:

• HomePod, HomePod mini, and modern Apple TV. These require an AirPlay 2 pair-setup handshake that AirPipe does not implement, and they will not appear in the speaker list.
• Some HomeKit-locked speakers configured to require AirPlay 2 only.

If your speaker is on your local Wi-Fi network, supports AirPlay, and AirPipe doesn't list it, it's most likely an AirPlay-2-only device. Adding support for those would require implementing the full AirPlay 2 pairing flow, which is out of scope for AirPipe today.

AirPipe asks for the RECORD_AUDIO permission, but it does not use the microphone.

Android requires this permission as a prerequisite for the AudioPlaybackCapture API, the system mechanism that lets apps forward the audio your phone is currently playing. Granting the permission does not grant access to the microphone; the API only ever produces the same audio your phone is already routing to its speakers or headphones.

AirPipe never records the microphone, never writes audio to disk, and never uploads audio anywhere. See the privacy policy for the full list of what AirPipe does and does not do.

AirPipe is an Android app that:

1. Discovers AirPlay-compatible speakers on your local Wi-Fi network using mDNS / Bonjour, the standard discovery protocol AirPlay speakers advertise themselves with.
2. Asks Android for permission to capture playback audio using the AudioPlaybackCapture API and a foreground service. You see this as the standard "AirPipe needs to access your audio" system prompt.
3. Forwards the captured audio as encrypted RTP packets over your local network to one or more speakers you select. The audio path is phone to speaker, with nothing in between that we control.
4. Handles multi-speaker sync by sharing the same audio timeline across all selected speakers so a song plays in time across rooms.

Audio is never uploaded to a remote server, never written to disk, and never analyzed for anything beyond the timing diagnostics needed to keep multiple speakers in sync. See the privacy policy for full details.