UxPlay 1.57: AirPlay-Mirror and AirPlay-Audio server for Linux, macOS, and Unix (now also runs on Windows).

Now developed at the GitHub site https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay (where all user issues should be posted).

Highlights:

This project is a GPLv3 open source unix AirPlay2 Mirror server for Linux, macOS, and *BSD. It was initially developed by antimof using code from OpenMAX-based RPiPlay, which in turn derives from AirplayServer, shairplay, and playfair. (The antimof site is no longer involved in development, but periodically posts updates pulled from the new main UxPlay site).

UxPlay is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and 22.04.1 LTS, Linux Mint 20.3, Pop!_OS 22.04 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.6 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.4, Arch Linux 22.10, macOS 12.3 (Intel and M1), FreeBSD 13.1. On Raspberry Pi, it is tested on Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye) (32- and 64-bit), Ubuntu 22.04.1, and Manjaro RPi4 22.10. Also tested on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11.

Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Mac computers) in a window on the server display (with the possibility of sharing that window on screen-sharing applications such as Zoom) on a host running Linux, macOS, or other unix (and now also Microsoft Windows). UxPlay supports Apple’s AirPlay2 protocol using “Legacy Pairing”, but some features are missing. (Details of what is publically known about Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol can be found here, here and here). While there is no guarantee that future iOS releases will keep supporting “Legacy Pairing”, the recent iOS 16 release continues support.

The UxPlay server and its client must be on the same local area network, on which a Bonjour/Zeroconf mDNS/DNS-SD server is also running (only DNS-SD “Service Discovery” service is strictly necessary, it is not necessary that the local network also be of the “.local” mDNS-based type). On Linux and BSD Unix servers, this is usually provided by Avahi, through the avahi-daemon service, and is included in most Linux distributions (this service can also be provided by macOS, iOS or Windows servers).

Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be initiated both in AirPlay Mirror mode (which streams lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in the alternative AirPlay Audio mode which streams Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring. In Audio mode, metadata is displayed in the uxplay terminal; if UxPlay option -ca <name> is used, the accompanying cover art is also output to a periodically-updated file <name>, and can be viewed with a (reloading) graphics viewer of your choice. Switching between Mirror and Audio modes during an active connection is possible: in Mirror mode, stop mirroring (or close the mirror window) and start an Audio mode connection, switch back by initiating a Mirror mode connection; cover-art display stops/restarts as you leave/re-enter Audio mode.

Possibility for using hardware-accelerated h264 video-decoding, if available.

UxPlay uses GStreamer “plugins” for rendering audio and video. This means that video and audio are supported “out of the box”, using a choice of plugins. AirPlay streams video in h264 format: gstreamer decoding is plugin agnostic, and uses accelerated GPU hardware h264 decoders if available; if not, software decoding is used.

Note to packagers:

UxPlay’s GPLv3 license does not have an added “exception” explicitly allowing it to be distributed in compiled form when linked to OpenSSL versions prior to v. 3.0.0 (older versions of OpenSSL have a license clause incompatible with the GPL unless OpenSSL can be regarded as a “System Library”, which it is in *BSD). Many Linux distributions treat OpenSSL as a “System Library”, but some (e.g. Debian) do not: in this case, the issue is solved by linking with OpenSSL-3.0.0 or later.

Getting UxPlay:

Either download and unzip UxPlay-master.zip, or (if git is installed): “git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay”. You can also download a recent or earlier version listed in Releases.

Building UxPlay on Linux (or *BSD):

Debian-based systems:

(Adapt these instructions for non-Debian-based Linuxes or *BSD; for macOS, see specific instruction below). See Troubleshooting below for help with any difficulties.

You need a C/C++ compiler (e.g. g++) with the standard development libraries installed. Debian-based systems provide a package “build-essential” for use in compiling software. You also need pkg-config: if it is not found by “which pkg-config”, install pkg-config or its work-alike replacement pkgconf. Also make sure that cmake>=3.4.1 is installed: “sudo apt-get install cmake” (add build-essential and pkg-config (or pkgconf) to this if needed).

Make sure that your distribution provides OpenSSL 1.1.1 or later, and libplist 2.0 or later. (This means Debian 10 “Buster”, Ubuntu 18.04 or later.) If it does not, you may need to build and install these from source (see instructions at the end of this README). If you have a non-standard OpenSSL installation, you may need to set the environment variable OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR (e.g. , “export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/lib64” if that is where it is installed).

In a terminal window, change directories to the source directory of the downloaded source code (“UxPlay-*”, “*” = “master” or the release tag for zipfile downloads, “UxPlay” for “git clone” downloads), then follow the instructions below:

Note: By default UxPlay will be built with optimization for the computer it is built on; when this is not the case, as when you are packaging for a distribution, use the cmake option -DNO_MARCH_NATIVE=ON.

If you use Gstreamer older than 1.20, and wish to share the UxPlay screen using screen-sharing apps such as Zoom, you should use the cmake option “-DZOOMFIX=ON” in step 3. This requires the X11 development libraries to be installed: on Debian-based systems do this with “sudo apt-get install libx11-dev” . “ZOOMFIX” is not needed on macOS, or if you are using non-X11 windows (such as OpenGL) on Linux. See ZOOMFIX compile-time option below for more information, and alternatives to “ZOOMFIX”. ZOOMFIX will NOT be applied if GStreamer >= 1.20 is found.

  1. sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libplist-dev“. (unless you need to build OpenSSL and libplist from source).
  2. sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev.
  3. cmake . (For a cleaner build, which is useful if you modify the source, replace this by “mkdir build; cd build; cmake ..”: you can then delete the build directory if needed, without affecting the source.) Also add any cmake “-D” options here as needed (e.g, -DZOOMFIX=ON or -DNO_MARCH_NATIVE=ON).
  4. make
  5. sudo make install (you can afterwards uninstall with sudo make uninstall in the same directory in which this was run).

The above script installs the executable file “uxplay” to /usr/local/bin, (and installs a manpage to somewhere like /usr/local/share/man/man1 and README files to somewhere like /usr/local/share/doc/uxplay). The uxplay executable can also be found in the build directory after the build process, if you wish to test before installing (in which case the GStreamer plugins must already be installed)

Next install the GStreamer plugins that are needed with sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-<plugin>. Values of <plugin> required are:

  1. “plugins-base”
  2. “libav” (for sound),
  3. “plugins-good” (for v4l2 hardware h264 decoding)
  4. “plugins-bad” (for h264 decoding).

Plugins that may also be needed include “gl” for OpenGL support (which may be useful, and should be used with h264 decoding by the NVIDIA GPU), and “x” for X11 support, although these may already be installed; “vaapi” is needed for hardware-accelerated h264 video decoding by Intel or AMD graphics (but not for use with NVIDIA using proprietary drivers). Also install “tools” to get the utility gst-inspect-1.0 for examining the GStreamer installation. If sound is not working, “alsa”“,”pulseaudio”, or “pipewire” plugins may need to be installed, depending on how your audio is set up.

Finally, run uxplay in a terminal window. Use Ctrl-C (or close the window) to terminate it when done. If it is not seen by the iOS client’s drop-down “Screen Mirroring” panel, check that your DNS-SD server (usually avahi-daemon) is running: do this in a terminal window with systemctl status avahi-daemon. If this shows the avahi-daemon is not running, control it with sudo systemctl [start,stop,enable,disable] avahi-daemon (or avahi-daemon.service). If UxPlay is seen, but the client fails to connect when it is selected, there may be a firewall on the server that prevents UxPlay from receiving client connection requests unless some network ports are opened. See Troubleshooting below for help with this or other problems.

To display the accompanying “Cover Art” from sources like Apple Music in Audio-Only (ALAC) mode, run “uxplay -ca <name> &” in the background, then run a image viewer with an autoreload feature: an example is “feh”: run “feh -R 1 <name>” in the foreground; terminate feh and then Uxplay with “ctrl-C fg ctrl-C”.

One common problem involves GStreamer attempting to use incorrectly-configured or absent accelerated hardware h264 video decoding (e.g., VAAPI). Try “uxplay -avdec” to force software video decoding; if this works you can then try to fix accelerated hardware video decoding if you need it, or just uninstall the GStreamer VAAPI plugin. If your system uses the Wayland compositor for graphics, use “uxplay -vs waylandsink”. See Usage for more run-time options.

Special instructions for Raspberry Pi (only tested on model 4B):

The basic uxplay options for R Pi are uxplay [-v4l2] [-vs <videosink>]. The choice <videosink> = glimagesink is sometimes useful. On a system without X11 (like R Pi OS Lite) with framebuffer video, use <videosink> = kmssink. With the Wayland video compositor, use <videosink> = waylandsink. For convenience, these options are also available combined in options -rpi, -rpigl -rpifb, -rpiwl, respectively provided for X11, X11 with OpenGL, framebuffer, and Wayland systems. You may find that just “uxplay”, (without -v4l2 or -rpi* options, which lets GStreamer try to find the best video solution by itself) provides the best results.

   ssh user@remote_host
   export DISPLAY=:0
   nohup uxplay [options] > FILE &

Sound and video will play on the remote host; “nohup” will keep uxplay running if the ssh session is closed. Terminal output is saved to FILE (which can be /dev/null to discard it).

Non-Debian-based Linux or *BSD

Building UxPlay on macOS: (Intel X86_64 and “Apple Silicon” M1/M2 Macs)

Note: A native AirPlay Server feature is included in macOS 12 Monterey, but is restricted to recent hardware. UxPlay can run on older macOS systems that will not be able to run Monterey, or can run Monterey but not AirPlay.

These instructions for macOS assume that the Xcode command-line developer tools are installed (if Xcode is installed, open the Terminal, type “sudo xcode-select –install” and accept the conditions).

It is also assumed that CMake >= 3.13 is installed: this can be done with package managers MacPorts, Fink or Homebrew, or by a download from https://cmake.org/download/.

First install OpenSSL and libplist: static versions of these libaries will be used, so they can be uninstalled after UxPlay is built. These are available in MacPorts and Homebrew, or they can easily be built from source (see instructions at the end of this README; this requires development tools autoconf, automake, libtool, which can be installed using MacPorts, HomeBrew, or Fink).

Next get the latest macOS release of GStreamer-1.0.

For the “official” release: install both the macOS runtime and development installer packages. Assuming that the latest release is 1.20.3. install gstreamer-1.0-1.20.3-universal.pkg and gstreamer-1.0-devel-1.20.3-universal.pkg. (If you have an Intel-architecture Mac, and have problems with the “universal” packages, you can also use gstreamer-1.0-1.18.6-x86_64.pkg and gstreamer-1.0-devel-1.18.6-x86_64.pkg.) Click on them to install (they install to /Library/FrameWorks/GStreamer.framework).

For Homebrew: pkgconfig is needed (“brew install pkgconfig”). Then “brew install gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-libav”. This appears to be functionally equivalent to using GStreamer.framework, but causes a large number of extra packages to be installed by Homebrew as dependencies. You may need to set the environment variable GST_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/local/lib/gstreamer-1.0 to point to the Homebrew GStreamer installation.

Finally, build and install uxplay (without ZOOMFIX): open a terminal and change into the UxPlay source directory (“UxPlay-master” for zipfile downloads, “UxPlay” for “git clone” downloads) and build/install with “cmake . ; make ; sudo make install” (same as for Linux).

Using GStreamer installed from MacPorts (not recommended):

To install: “sudo port install pkgconfig”; “sudo port install gstreamer1-gst-plugins-base gstreamer1-gst-plugins-good gstreamer1-gst-plugins-bad gstreamer1-gst-libav”. The MacPorts GStreamer is built to use X11, so uxplay must be run from an XQuartz terminal, can use ZOOMFIX, and needs option “-vs ximagesink”. On an unibody (non-retina) MacBook Pro, the default resolution wxh = 1920x1080 was too large, but using option “-s 800x600” worked. The MacPorts GStreamer pipeline seems fragile against attempts to change the X11 window size, or to rotations that switch a connected client between portrait and landscape mode while uxplay is running. Using the MacPorts X11 GStreamer seems only possible if the image size is left unchanged from the initial “-s wxh” setting (also use the iPad/iPhone setting that locks the screen orientation against switching between portrait and landscape mode as the device is rotated).

Building UxPlay on Microsoft Windows, using MSYS2 with the MinGW-64 compiler.

  1. Download and install Bonjour SDK for Windows v3.0 from the official Apple site https://developer.apple.com/download

  2. (This is for 64-bit Windows; a build for 32-bit Windows should be possible, but is not tested.) The unix-like MSYS2 build environment will be used: download and install MSYS2 from the official site https://www.msys2.org/. Accept the default installation location C:\mysys64.

  3. Next update MSYS2 and install the MinGW-64 compiler and cmake (MSYS2 packages are installed with a variant of the “pacman” package manager used by Arch Linux). Open a MSYS2 MinGW x64 terminal from the MSYS2 64 bit tab in the Windows Start menu, then run

    pacman -Syu mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

    After installation, you can add this compiler to your IDE. The compiler with all required dependencies is located in the msys64 directory, with default path C:/msys64/mingw64. Here we will simply build UxPlay from the command line in the MSYS2 environment (this uses “ninja” in place of “make” for the build system).

  4. Download the latest UxPlay from github (to use git, install it with pacman -S git, then “git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay”), then install UxPlay dependencies (openssl is already installed with MSYS2):

    pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-libplist mingw-w64-x86_64-gstreamer mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-base

    Note that libplist will be linked statically to the uxplay executable. It should also be possible to install gstreamer for Windows from the offical GStreamer site, especially if you are trying a different Windows build system.

  5. cd to the UxPlay source directory, then “mkdir build” and “cd build”, followed by

    cmake ..

    ninja

  6. Assuming no error in either of these, you will have built the uxplay executable uxplay.exe in the current (“build”) directory. The “sudo make install” and “sudo make uninstall” features offered in the other builds are not available on Windows; instead, the MSYS2 environment has /mingw64/... available, and you can install the uxplay.exe executable in C:/msys64/mingw64/bin (plus manpage and documentation in C:/msys64/mingw64/share/...) with

    cmake --install . --prefix /mingw64

    To be able to view the manpage, you need to install the manpage viewer with “pacman -S man”.

To run uxplay.exe you need to install some gstreamer plugin packages with pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-<plugin>, where the required ones have <plugin> given by

  1. libav
  2. plugins-good
  3. plugins-bad

Other possible MSYS2 gstreamer plugin packages you might use are listed in MSYS2 packages.

You also will need to grant permission to the uxplay executable uxplay.exe to access data through the Windows firewall. You may automatically be offered the choice to do this when you first run uxplay, or you may need to do it using Windows Settings->Update and Security->Windows Security->Firewall & network protection -> allow an app through firewall. If your virus protection flags uxplay.exe as “suspicious” (but without a true malware signature) you may need to give it an exception.

Now test by running “uxplay” (in a MSYS2 terminal window). If you need to specify the audiosink, there are two main choices on Windows: the older DirectSound plugin “-as directsoundsink”, and the more modern Windows Audio Session API (wasapi) plugin “-as wasapisink”, which supports additional options such as

uxplay -as 'wasapisink low_latency=true device=\"<guid>\"'

where <guid> specifies an available audio device by its GUID, which can be found using “gst-device-monitor-1.0 Audio”: <guid> has a form like \{0.0.0.00000000\}.\{98e35b2b-8eba-412e-b840-fd2c2492cf44\}. If “device” is not specified, the default audio device is used.

If you wish to specify the videosink using the -vs <videosink> option, some choices for <videosink> are d3d11videosink, d3dvideosink, glimagesink, gtksink. With Direct3D 11.0 or greater, you can get the ability to toggle into and out of fullscreen mode using the Alt-Enter key combination with option -vs "d3d11videosink fullscreen-toggle-mode=alt-enter". For convenience, this option will be added if just -vs d3d11videosink (by itself) is used.

The executable uxplay.exe can also be run without the MSYS2 environment, in the Windows Terminal, with C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\uxplay.

Usage

Options:

-n server_name (Default: UxPlay); server_name@_hostname_ will be the name that appears offering AirPlay services to your iPad, iPhone etc, where hostname is the name of the server running uxplay. This will also now be the name shown above the mirror display (X11) window.

-nh Do not append “@_hostname_” at the end of the AirPlay server name.

-s wxh (e.g. -s 1920x1080 , which is the default ) sets the display resolution (width and height, in pixels). (This may be a request made to the AirPlay client, and perhaps will not be the final resolution you get.) w and h are whole numbers with four digits or less. Note that the height pixel size is the controlling one used by the client for determining the streaming format; the width is dynamically adjusted to the shape of the image (portrait or landscape format, depending on how an iPad is held, for example).

-s wxh@r As above, but also informs the AirPlay client about the screen refresh rate of the display. Default is r=60 (60 Hz); r must be a whole number less than 256.

-o turns on an “overscanned” option for the display window. This reduces the image resolution by using some of the pixels requested by option -s wxh (or their default values 1920x1080) by adding an empty boundary frame of unused pixels (which would be lost in a full-screen display that overscans, and is not displayed by gstreamer). Recommendation: don’t use this option unless there is some special reason to use it.

-fs uses fullscreen mode, but only works with Wayland or VAAPI plugins.

-p allows you to select the network ports used by UxPlay (these need to be opened if the server is behind a firewall). By itself, -p sets “legacy” ports TCP 7100, 7000, 7001, UDP 6000, 6001, 7011. -p n (e.g. -p 35000) sets TCP and UDP ports n, n+1, n+2. -p n1,n2,n3 (comma-separated values) sets each port separately; -p n1,n2 sets ports n1,n2,n2+1. -p tcp n or -p udp n sets just the TCP or UDP ports. Ports must be in the range [1024-65535].

If the -p option is not used, the ports are chosen dynamically (randomly), which will not work if a firewall is running.

-avdec forces use of software h264 decoding using Gstreamer element avdec_h264 (libav h264 decoder). This option should prevent autovideosink choosing a hardware-accelerated videosink plugin such as vaapisink.

-vp parser choses the GStreamer pipeline’s h264 parser element, default is h264parse. Using quotes “…” allows options to be added.

-vd decoder chooses the GStreamer pipeline’s h264 decoder element, instead of letting decodebin pick it for you. Software decoding is done by avdec_h264; various hardware decoders include: vaapih264dec, nvdec, nvh264dec, v4l2h264dec (these require that the appropriate hardware is available). Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with the decoder name.

-vc converter chooses the GStreamer pipeline’s videoconverter element, instead of the default value “videoconvert”. When using Video4Linux2 hardware-decoding by a GPU,-vc v4l2convert will also use the GPU for video conversion. Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with the converter name.

-vs videosink chooses the GStreamer videosink, instead of letting autovideosink pick it for you. Some videosink choices are: ximagesink, xvimagesink, vaapisink (for intel graphics), gtksink, glimagesink, waylandsink, osximagesink (for macOS), kmssink (for systems without X11, like Raspberry Pi OS lite) or fpsdisplaysink (which shows the streaming framerate in fps). Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with the videosink name. For example, fullscreen mode is supported by the vaapisink plugin, and is obtained using -vs "vaapisink fullscreen=true"; this also works with waylandsink. The syntax of such options is specific to a given plugin, and some choices of videosink might not work on your system.

-vs 0 suppresses display of streamed video, but plays streamed audio. (The client’s screen is still mirrored at a reduced rate of 1 frame per second, but is not rendered or displayed.) This feature (which streams audio in AAC audio format) is now probably unneeded, as UxPlay can now stream superior-quality Apple Lossless audio without video in Airplay non-mirror mode.

-v4l2 Video settings for hardware h264 video decoding in the GPU by Video4Linux2. Equivalent to -vd v4l2h264dec -vc v4l2convert.

-bt709 A workaround for the failure of the older Video4Linux2 plugin to recognize Apple’s use of an uncommon (but permitted) “full-range color” variant of the bt709 color standard for digital TV. This is no longer needed by GStreamer-1.20.4 and backports from it.

-rpi Equivalent to “-v4l2”. Use for “Desktop” Raspberry Pi systems with X11.

-rpigl Equivalent to “-rpi -vs glimagesink”. Sometimes better for “Desktop” Raspberry Pi systems with X11.

-rpifb Equivalent to “-rpi -vs kmssink” (use for Raspberry Pi systems using the framebuffer, like RPi OS Bullseye Lite).

-rpiwl Equivalent to “-rpi -vs waylandsink”, for Raspberry Pi “Desktop” systems using the Wayland video compositor (use for Ubuntu 21.10 for Raspberry Pi 4B).

-as audiosink chooses the GStreamer audiosink, instead of letting autoaudiosink pick it for you. Some audiosink choices are: pulsesink, alsasink, pipewiresink, osssink, oss4sink, jackaudiosink, osxaudiosink (for macOS), wasapisink, directsoundsink (for Windows). Using quotes “…” might allow some parameters to be included with the audiosink name. (Some choices of audiosink might not work on your system.)

-as 0 (or just -a) suppresses playing of streamed audio, but displays streamed video.

-ca filename provides a file (where filename can include a full path) used for output of “cover art” (from Apple Music, etc.,) in audio-only ALAC mode. This file is overwritten with the latest cover art as it arrives. Cover art (jpeg format) is discarded if this option is not used. Use with a image viewer that reloads the image if it changes, or regularly (e.g. once per second.). To achieve this, run “uxplay -ca [path/to/]filename &” in the background, then run the the image viewer in the foreground. Example, using feh as the viewer: run “feh -R 1 [path/to/]filename” (in the same terminal window in which uxplay was put into the background). To quit, use ctrl-C fg ctrl-C to terminate the image viewer, bring uxplay into the foreground, and terminate it too.

-reset n sets a limit of n consecutive timeout failures of the client to respond to ntp requests from the server (these are sent every 3 seconds to check if the client is still present, and synchronize with it). After n failures, the client will be presumed to be offline, and the connection will be reset to allow a new connection. The default value of n is 5; the value n = 0 means “no limit” on timeouts.

-nc maintains previous UxPlay < 1.45 behavior that does not close the video window when the the client sends the “Stop Mirroring” signal. This option is currently used by default in macOS, as the window created in macOS by GStreamer does not terminate correctly (it causes a segfault) if it is still open when the GStreamer pipeline is closed.

-FPSdata Turns on monitoring of regular reports about video streaming performance that are sent by the client. These will be displayed in the terminal window if this option is used. The data is updated by the client at 1 second intervals.

-fps n sets a maximum frame rate (in frames per second) for the AirPlay client to stream video; n must be a whole number less than 256. (The client may choose to serve video at any frame rate lower than this; default is 30 fps.) A setting below 30 fps might be useful to reduce latency if you are running more than one instance of uxplay at the same time. This setting is only an advisory to the client device, so setting a high value will not force a high framerate. (You can test using “-vs fpsdisplaysink” to see what framerate is being received, or use the option -FPSdata which displays video-stream performance data continuously sent by the client during video-streaming.)

-f {H|V|I} implements “videoflip” image transforms: H = horizontal flip (right-left flip, or mirror image); V = vertical flip ; I = 180 degree rotation or inversion (which is the combination of H with V).

-r {R|L} 90 degree Right (clockwise) or Left (counter-clockwise) rotations; these image transforms are carried out after any -f transforms.

-m generates a random MAC address to use instead of the true hardware MAC number of the computer’s network card. (Different server_name, MAC addresses, and network ports are needed for each running uxplay if you attempt to run two instances of uxplay on the same computer.) If UxPlay fails to find the true MAC address of a network card, (more specifically, the MAC address used by the first active network interface detected) a random MAC address will be used even if option -m was not specifed. (Note that a random MAC address will be different each time UxPlay is started).

-t timeout will cause the server to relaunch (without stopping uxplay) if no connections have been present during the previous timeout seconds. You may wish to use this if the Server is not visible to new Clients that were inactive when the Server was launched, and an idle Bonjour registration eventually becomes unavailable for new connections (this is a workaround for what may be due to a problem with your DNS-SD or Avahi setup). This option is currently disabled in macOS, for the same reason that requires the -nc option.

-vdmp Dumps h264 video to file videodump.h264. -vdmp n dumps not more than n NAL units to videodump.x.h264; x= 1,2,… increases each time a SPS/PPS NAL unit arrives. To change the name videodump, use -vdmp [n] filename.

-admp Dumps audio to file audiodump.x.aac (AAC-ELD format audio), audiodump.x.alac (ALAC format audio) or audiodump.x.aud (other-format audio), where x = 1,2,3… increases each time the audio format changes. -admp n restricts the number of packets dumped to a file to n or less. To change the name audiodump, use -admp [n] filename. Note that (unlike dumped video) the dumped audio is currently only useful for debugging, as it is not containerized to make it playable with standard audio players.

-d Enable debug output. Note: this does not show GStreamer error or debug messages. To see GStreamer error and warning messages, set the environment variable GST_DEBUG with “export GST_DEBUG=2” before running uxplay. To see GStreamer debug messages, set GST_DEBUG=4; increase this to see even more of the GStreamer inner workings.

Troubleshooting

Note: uxplay is run from a terminal command line, and informational messages are written to the terminal.

0. Problems in compiling UxPlay.

One user (on Ubuntu) found compilation failed with messages about linking to “usr/local/lib/libcrypto.a” and “zlib”. This was because (in addition to the standard ubuntu installation of libssl-dev), the user was unaware that a second installation with libcrypto in /usr/local was present. Solution: when more than one installation of OpenSSL is present, set the environment variable OPEN_SSL_ROOT_DIR to point to the correct one; on 64-bit Ubuntu, this is done by running export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/lib/X86_64-linux-gnu/ before running cmake.

1. uxplay starts, but stalls after “Initialized server socket(s)” appears, without any server name showing on the client.

Stalling this way, with no server name showing on the client as available, probably means that your network does not have a running Bonjour/zeroconf DNS-SD server. On Linux, make sure Avahi is installed, and start the avahi-daemon service on the system running uxplay (your distribution will document how to do this). Some systems may instead use the mdnsd daemon as an alternative to provide DNS-SD service. (FreeBSD offers both alternatives, but only Avahi was tested: one of the steps needed for getting Avahi running on a FreeBSD system is to edit /usr/local/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf to uncomment a line for airplay support.)

After starting uxplay, use the utility avahi-browse -a -t in a different terminal window on the server to verify that the UxPlay AirTunes and AirPlay services are correctly registered (only the AirTunes service is used in the “Legacy” AirPlay Mirror mode used by UxPlay). If the UxPlay service is listed by avahi-browse, but is not seen by the client, the problem is likely to be a problem with the local network.

2. uxplay starts, but stalls after “Initialized server socket(s)” appears, with the server name showing on the client (but the client fails to connect when the UxPlay server is selected).

This shows that a DNS-SD service is working, but a firewall on the server is probably blocking the connection request from the client. (One user who insisted that the firewall had been turned off turned out to have had two active firewalls (firewalld and ufw) both running on the server!) If possible, either turn off the firewall to see if that is the problem, or get three consecutive network ports, starting at port n, all three in the range 1024-65535, opened for both tcp and udp, and use “uxplay -p n” (or open UDP 7011,6001,6000 TCP 7100,7000,7001 and use “uxplay -p”).

3. Problems after the client-server connection has been made:

If you do not see the message raop_rtp_mirror starting mirroring, something went wrong before the client-server negotiations were finished. For such problems, use “uxplay -d” (debug log option) to see what is happening: it will show how far the connection process gets before the failure occurs. You can compare your debug output to that from a successful start of UxPlay in the UxPlay Wiki.

If UxPlay reports that mirroring started, but you get no video or audio, the problem is probably from a GStreamer plugin that doesn’t work on your system (by default, GStreamer uses the “autovideosink” and “autoaudiosink” algorithms to guess what are the “best” plugins to use on your system). A different reason for no audio occurred when a user with a firewall only opened two udp network ports: three are required (the third one receives the audio data).

Raspberry Pi devices (-rpi option) only work with hardware GPU decoding if the Video4Linux2 plugin in GStreamer v1.20.x or earlier has been patched (see the UxPlay Wiki for patches). This may be fixed in the future when GStreamer-1.22 is released, or by backport patches in distributions such as Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye).

Sometimes “autovideosink” may select the OpenGL renderer “glimagesink” which may not work correctly on your system. Try the options “-vs ximagesink” or “-vs xvimagesink” to see if using one of these fixes the problem.

Other reported problems are connected to the GStreamer VAAPI plugin (for hardware-accelerated Intel graphics, but not NVIDIA graphics). Use the option “-avdec” to force software h264 video decoding: this should prevent autovideosink from selecting the vaapisink videosink. Alternatively, find out if the gstreamer1.0-vaapi plugin is installed, and if so, uninstall it. (If this does not fix the problem, you can reinstall it.)

There are some reports of other GStreamer problems with hardware-accelerated Intel HD graphics. One user (on Debian) solved this with “sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free”. This is a driver for 8’th (or later) generation “*-lake” Intel chips, that seems to be related to VAAPI accelerated graphics.

If you do have Intel HD graphics, and have installed the vaapi plugin, but -vs vaapisink does not work, check that vaapi is not “blacklisted” in your GStreamer installation: run gst-inspect-1.0 vaapi, if this reports 0 features, you need to export GST_VAAPI_ALL_DRIVERS=1 before running uxplay, or set this in the default environment.

You can try to fix audio problems by using the “-as audiosink” option to choose the GStreamer audiosink , rather than have autoaudiosink pick one for you. The command “gst-inspect-1.0 | grep Sink | grep Audio” ” will show you which audiosinks are available on your system. (Replace “Audio” by “Video” to see videosinks). Some possible audiosinks are pulsesink, alsasink, osssink, oss4sink, and osxaudiosink (macOS).

If you ran cmake with “-DZOOMFIX=ON”, check if the problem is still there without ZOOMFIX. ZOOMFIX is only applied to the default videosink choice (“autovideosink”) and the two X11 videosinks “ximagesink” and “xvimagesink”. ZOOMFIX is only designed for these last two; if autovideosink chooses a different videosink, ZOOMFIX is now ignored. If you are using the X11 windowing system (standard on Linux), and have trouble with screen-sharing on Zoom, use ZOOMFIX and “-vs xvimagesink” (or “-vs ximagesink” if the previous choice doesn’t work).

As other videosink choices are not affected by ZOOMFIX, they may or may not be visible to screen-sharing apps. Cairo-based windows created on Linux with “-vs gtksink” are visible to screen-sharing aps without ZOOMFIX; windows on macOS created by “-vs glimagesink” (default choice) and “-vs osximagesink” are also visible.

The “OpenGL renderer” window created on Linux by “-vs glimagesink” sometimes does not close properly when its “close” button is clicked. (this is a GStreamer issue). You may need to terminate uxplay with Ctrl-C to close a “zombie” OpenGl window. If similar problems happen when the client sends the “Stop Mirroring” signal, try the no-close option “-nc” that leaves the video window open.

4. GStreamer issues (missing plugins, etc.):

To troubleshoot GStreamer execute “export GST_DEBUG=2” to set the GStreamer debug-level environment-variable in the terminal where you will run uxplay, so that you see warning and error messages; see GStreamer debugging tools for how to see much more of what is happening inside GStreamer. Run “gst-inspect-1.0” to see which GStreamer plugins are installed on your system.

Some extra GStreamer packages for special plugins may need to be installed (or reinstalled: a user using a Wayland display system as an alternative to X11 reported that after reinstalling Lubuntu 18.4, UxPlay would not work until gstreamer1.0-x was installed, presumably for Wayland’s X11-compatibility mode). Different distributions may break up GStreamer 1.x into packages in different ways; the packages listed above in the build instructions should bring in other required GStreamer packages as dependencies, but will not install all possible plugins.

The GStreamer video pipeline, which is shown in the initial output from uxplay -d, has the default form

appsrc name=video_source ! queue ! h264parse ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! autovideosink name=video_sink sync=false

The pipeline is fully configurable: default elements “h264parse”, “decodebin”, “videoconvert”, and “autovideosink” can respectively be replaced by using uxplay options -vp, -vd, -vc, and -vs, if there is any need to modify it (entries can be given in quotes “…” to include options).

5. Mirror screen freezes:

This can happen if the TCP video stream from the client stops arriving at the server, probably because of network problems (the UDP audio stream may continue to arrive). At 3-second intervals, UxPlay checks that the client is still connected by sending it a request for a NTP time signal. If a reply is not received from the client within a 0.3 sec time-window, an “ntp timeout” is registered. If a certain number (currently 5) of consecutive ntp timeouts occur, UxPlay assumes that the client is “dead”, and resets the connection, becoming available for connection to a new client, or reconnection to the previous one. Sometimes the connection may recover before the timeout limit is reached, and if the default limit is not right for your network, it can be modified using the option “-reset n”, where n is the desired timeout-limit value (n = 0 means “no limit”). If the connection starts to recover after ntp timeouts, a corrupt video packet from before the timeout may trigger a “connection reset by peer” error, which also causes UxPlay to reset the connection. When the connection is reset, the “frozen” mirror screen of the previous connection is left in place, and will be taken over by a new client connection when it is made.

6. Protocol issues, such as failure to decrypt ALL video and audio streams from old or non-Apple clients:

A protocol failure may trigger an unending stream of error messages, and means that the audio decryption key (also used in video decryption) was not correctly extracted from data sent by the client. This should not happen for iOS 9.3 or later clients. However, if a client uses the same older version of the protocol that is used by the Windows-based AirPlay client emulator AirMyPC, the protocol can be switched to the older version by the setting OLD_PROTOCOL_CLIENT_USER_AGENT_LIST in UxPlay/lib/global.h. UxPlay reports the client’s “User Agent” string when it connects. If some other client also fails to decrypt all audio and video, try adding its “User Agent” string in place of “xxx” in the entry “AirMyPC/2.0;xxx” in global.h and rebuild uxplay.

Note that Uxplay declares itself to be an AppleTV3,2 with a sourceVersion 220.68; this can also be changed in global.h. It had been thought that it was necessary for UxPlay to claim to be an older 32 bit AppleTV model that cannot run modern 64bit tvOS, in order for the client to use a “legacy” protocol for pairing with the server. However, UxPlay still works if it declares itself as an AppleTV6,2 with sourceVersion 380.20.1 (an AppleTV 4K 1st gen, introduced 2017, running tvOS 12.2.1); it seems that the use of “legacy” protocol just requires bit 27 (listed as “SupportsLegacyPairing”) of the “features” plist code (reported to the client by the AirPlay server) to be set. The “features” code and other settings are set in UxPlay/lib/dnssdint.h.

Changelog

1.57 2022-10-09 Minor fixes: (fix coredump on AUR on “stop mirroring”, occurs when compiled with AUR CFLAGS -DFORTIFY_SOURCE); graceful exit when required plugins are missing; improved support for builds on Windows. Include audioresample in GStreamer audio pipeline.

1.56 2022-09-01 Added support for building and running UxPlay-1.56 on Windows (no changes to Unix (Linux, *BSD, macOS) codebase.)

1.56 2022-07-30 Remove -bt709 from -rpi, -rpiwl, -rpifb as GStreamer is now fixed.

1.55 2022-07-04 Remove the bt709 fix from -v4l2 and create a new -bt709 option (previous “-v4l2” is now “-v4l2 -bt709”). This allows the currently-required -bt709 option to be used on its own on RPi without -v4l2 (sometimes this give better results).

1.54 2022-06-25 Add support for “Cover Art” display in Audio-only (ALAC) mode. Reverted a change that caused VAAPI to crash with AMD POLARIS graphics cards. Minor internal changes to plist code and uxplay option parsing.

1.53 2022-06-13 Internal changes to audio sync code, revised documentation, Minor bugfix (fix assertion crash when resent audio packets are empty).

1.52 2022-05-05 Cleaned up initial audio sync code, and reformatted streaming debug output (readable aligned timestamps with decimal points in seconds). Eliminate memory leaks (found by valgrind). Support for display of ALAC (audio-only) metadata (soundtrack artist names, titles etc.) in the uxplay terminal.

1.51 2022-04-24 Reworked options forVideo4Linux2 support (new option -v4l2) and short options -rpi, -rpifb, -rpiwl as synonyms for -v4l2, -v4l2 -vs kmssink, and -v4l2 -vs waylandsink. Reverted a change from 1.48 that broke reconnection after “Stop Mirroring” is sent by client.

1.50 2022-04-22 Added -fs fullscreen option (for Wayland or VAAPI plugins only), Changed -rpi to be for framebuffer (“lite”) RPi systems and added -rpigl (OpenGL) and -rpiwl (Wayland) options for RPi Desktop systems. Also modified timestamps from “DTS” to “PTS” for latency improvement, plus internal cleanups.

1.49 2022-03-28 Addded options for dumping video and/or audio to file, for debugging, etc. h264 PPS/SPS NALU’s are shown with -d. Fixed video-not-working for M1 Mac clients.

1.48 2022-03-11 Made the GStreamer video pipeline fully configurable, for use with hardware h264 decoding. Support for Raspberry Pi.

1.47 2022-02-05 Added -FPSdata option to display (in the terminal) regular reports sent by the client about video streaming performance. Internal cleanups of processing of video packets received from the client. Added -reset n option to reset the connection after n ntp timeouts (also reset after “connection reset by peer” error in video stream).

1.46 2022-01-20 Restore pre-1.44 behavior (1.44 may have broken hardware acceleration): once again use decodebin in the video pipeline; introduce new option “-avdec” to force software h264 decoding by libav h264, if needed (to prevent selection of vaapisink by autovideosink). Update llhttp to v6.0.6. UxPlay now reports itself as AppleTV3,2. Restrict connections to one client at a time (second client must now wait for first client to disconnect).

1.45 2022-01-10 New behavior: close video window when client requests “stop mirroring”. (A new “no close” option “-nc” is added for users who wish to retain previous behavior that does not close the video window).

1.44 2021-12-13 Omit hash of aeskey with ecdh_secret for an AirMyPC client; make an internal rearrangement of where this hash is done. Fully report all initial communications between client and server in -d debug mode. Replace decodebin in GStreamer video pipeline by h264-specific elements.

1.43 2021-12-07 Various internal changes, such as tests for successful decryption, uniform treatment of informational/debug messages, etc., updated README.

1.42 2021-11-20 Fix MAC detection to work with modern Linux interface naming practices, MacOS and *BSD.

1.41 2021-11-11 Further cleanups of multiple audio format support (internal changes, separated RAOP and GStreamer audio/video startup)

1.40 2021-11-09 Cleanup segfault in ALAC support, manpage location fix, show request Plists in debug mode.

1.39 2021-11-06 Added support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio streams.

1.38 2021-10-8 Add -as audiosink option to allow user to choose the GStreamer audiosink.

1.37 2021-09-29 Append “@hostname” to AirPlay Server name, where “hostname” is the name of the server running uxplay (reworked change in 1.36).

1.36 2021-09-29 Implemented suggestion (by @mrbesen and @PetrusZ) to use hostname of machine runing uxplay as the default server name

1.35.1 2021-09-28 Added the -vs 0 option for streaming audio, but not displaying video.

1.35 2021-09-10 now uses a GLib MainLoop, and builds on macOS (tested on Intel Mac, 10.15 ). New option -t timeout for relaunching server if no connections were active in previous timeout seconds (to renew Bonjour registration).

1.341 2021-09-04 fixed: render logger was not being destroyed by stop_server()

1.34 2021-08-27 Fixed “ZOOMFIX”: the X11 window name fix was only being made the first time the GStreamer window was created by uxplay, and not if the server was relaunched after the GStreamer window was closed, with uxplay still running. Corrected in v. 1.34

ZOOMFIX compile-time option

In GStreamer-1.18.6 and earlier, if UxPlay is using an X11 window for screen mirroring, this window is not visible to screen-sharing apps like ZOOM. OpenGL-based windows (use -vs glimagesink or -vs gtksink, etc.) do not have this problem.

A workaround is to manually make the X11 window visible to screen-sharing apps with the X11 utility xdotool, if it is installed, with: xdotool selectwindow set_window --name <name> (where <name> is your choice of name), and then select the uxplay window by clicking on it with the mouse.

However, if “cmake -DZOOMFIX=ON .” is run before compiling, the mirrored window is visible to screen-sharing applications, without this procedure. To compile with ZOOMFIX=ON, the X11 development libraries must be installed. (Without ZOOMFIX, UxPlay has no dependence on X11).

ZOOMFIX is not needed in GStreamer-1.20 or later. Thanks to David Ventura https://github.com/DavidVentura/UxPlay for the fix and also for getting a fix into gstreamer-1.20.

Building OpenSSL >= 1.1.1 from source.

If you need to do this, note that you may be able to use a newer version (OpenSSL-3.0.1 is known to work). You will need the standard development toolset (autoconf, automake, libtool). Download the source code from https://www.openssl.org/source/. Install the downloaded openssl by opening a terminal in your Downloads directory, and unpacking the source distribution: (“tar -xvzf openssl-3.0.1.tar.gz ; cd openssl-3.0.1”). Then build/install with “./config ; make ; sudo make install_dev”. This will typically install the needed library libcrypto.*, either in /usr/local/lib or /usr/local/lib64.

(Ignore the following for builds on MacOS:) On some systems like Debian or Ubuntu, you may also need to add a missing entry /usr/local/lib64 in /etc/ld.so.conf (or place a file containing “/usr/local/lib64/libcrypto.so” in /etc/ld.so.conf.d) and then run “sudo ldconfig”.

Building libplist >= 2.0.0 from source.

(Note: on Debian 9 “Stretch” or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS editions, you can avoid this step by installing libplist-dev and libplist3 from Debian 10 or Ubuntu 18.04.) As well as the usual build tools (autoconf, automake, libtool), you may need to also install some libpython*-dev package. Download the latest source from https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libplist: get libplist-master.zip, then (“unzip libplist-master.zip ; cd libplist-master”), build/install (“./autogen.sh ; make ; sudo make install”). This will probably install libplist-2.0.* in /usr/local/lib.

(Ignore the following for builds on MacOS:) On some systems like Debian or Ubuntu, you may also need to add a missing entry /usr/local/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf (or place a file containing “/usr/local/lib/libplist-2.0.so” in /etc/ld.so.conf.d) and then run “sudo ldconfig”.

Disclaimer

All the resources in this repository are written using only freely available information from the internet. The code and related resources are meant for educational purposes only. It is the responsibility of the user to make sure all local laws are adhered to.

This project makes use of a third-party GPL library for handling FairPlay. The legal status of that library is unclear. Should you be a representative of Apple and have any objections against the legality of the library and its use in this project, please contact me and I’ll take the appropriate steps.

Given the large number of third-party AirPlay receivers (mostly closed-source) available for purchase, it is my understanding that an open source implementation of the same functionality wouldn’t violate any of Apple’s rights either.

UxPlay authors

[adapted from fdraschbacher’s notes on RPiPlay antecedents]

The code in this repository accumulated from various sources over time. Here is an attempt at listing the various authors and the components they created:

UxPlay was initially created by antimof from RPiPlay, by replacing its Raspberry-Pi-adapted OpenMAX video and audio rendering system with GStreamer rendering for desktop Linux systems (antimof’s work on code in renderers/ was later backported to RPiPlay).

The previous authors of code included in UxPlay by inheritance from RPiPlay include:

Independent of UxPlay, but used by it and bundled with it: