You can mix and match AirPlay 2-compatible speakers and audio system components from other brands to create a more versatile multi-room system. Originally launching alongside the original HomePod smart speaker (which has now finally been superseded by the HomePod 2), it was designed to let you set up two HomePods as a stereo pair (which we’d recommend) and pepper multiple HomePods around your home – all controlled by your iOS devices.īut it’s not restricted to Apple’s own ecosystem. The biggest advancement AirPlay 2 brought? Multi-room.ĪirPlay 2 marked Apple’s first real move into multi-room technology, finally letting you stream music from your iOS device to more than one product. How does AirPlay 2 work?Īnd then in 2018 came a much-needed update to Apple’s own streaming protocol: AirPlay 2. As long as your Apple device and the AirPlay speaker are on the same wi-fi network, music can be streamed between the two at the tap of a button.

Updates to AirPlay over the years have made the set-up process much simpler and quicker, and streaming is far more reliable. Those early products also didn’t have the most stable connection, so music would often drop out. During the early days of AirPlay, setting products up was a complicated, long-winded process that required an extra app – it was hardly seamless. Setting itself apart from Bluetooth, AirPlay uses your home’s wi-fi network to send content from one source (iPhone, iPod etc) to one compatible product (speaker, AV receiver, soundbar). It was based on Apple’s ‘AirTunes’ software from 2004, which was predominantly used to stream audio from iTunes to AirPort Express, so you could wirelessly listen to music across your home network from your Apple device. Originally it was a way to stream audio, video and photos wirelessly to the Apple TV, but eventually this opened up to include dedicated audio products. The first iteration of AirPlay launched back in 2010 as part of iOS 4 (around the time of the iPhone 4).

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